Albert Camus, in his novel, The Stranger, portrays the narrator, Meursault, as a stranger to the people around him and his surroundings. He lives in the moment, speaks as a ‘matter of fact-ly’, and does not make any big decision on his own accord. He waits until an outside force sets an action in motion that he can partake in. For example, when his neighbor Raymond asked Meursault to write a faux testimony to the police about Raymond beating his mistress, Meursault does not think this this is a horrible act, he does not get angry at Raymond, he simply agreed to. His lack of response to Raymond’s plan gave Raymond the impression that Meursault agrees with his outlook on beating the mistress, when in reality, he does not care. He lets others dictate his actions by adhering to whatever task comes across his way. He doesn’t care about the morality of his actions, and this is obvious because of his attitude towards his other neighbor, Salamano, who abuses his dog. But even when it came to providing care for his Maman before she died, Meursault states that he simply put her into a home because he could not afford it. He seemed to lack sadness in that decision, because his financial situation is what ultimately drove him to put her into a home. At the end of Part 1, we see Meursault kill a man. I noticed that leading up to the murder, Meursault describes the sky and the weather with such imagery and detail. “It occurred to me that all I had to do was turn around and that would be the end of it. But the whole beach, throbbing in the sun, was pressing on my back…..It was this burning, which I couldn’t stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn’t get the sun off of me” (59). Even when the readers are aware of Meursalt’s feeling on the matter, that he thinks this whole altercation is ‘stupid’, he still advances forward. How is it that the heat of the sun could drive a man against his own morals (the little of it he has left) and any logical thinking to advance so far forward that he kills a man? And also shoots him 4 other times, emptying the pistol that Salamano gave him? I think it is eerie that he is aware of the fact that killing the Arab man would not provide him relief or escape from the sun, but because it was so overbearing, he just kept moving forward.

Meursault