Friday, December 10, 2010

The Stranger - Albert Camus

          In Global Literature last class we talked about a very unique novel by Albert Camus called The Stranger. The first three chapters of The Stranger to be honest were a bit strange. The story takes place in Algeria, and it all starts with the death of the main character Mr. Meursault's mother. There were a lot of discussions in the class on how Mr. Meursaultt is unemotional about his mother's death considering that he doesn't even know the exact date of neither her birth nor death but I am thinking differently. His emotional behavior can be explained in different versions. Maybe they had a bad history, considering the fact that even when they used to live together they barely talked to each other. Maybe the distance actually made them distant; or my favorite maybe he lived in an environment where there was no room for emotional baggage of any sort and being reserved is a part of their lonely lives. We can see that all the way through the first chapters, in the case of the lonely Mr. Salamano who hangs out with his dog all day. In the case of Marie who leaves in the morning without a single note after a night of "physical interaction", or in the case of Raymond who beats his girlfriend without any regret what so ever. It all sounds strange when you put it like that but the book itself is strange, and I like strange. To support further more my theory we have the case when Mr. Meursault helps Raymond write a love letter, he has nothing against the violence that would tear apart Raymond's mistress, in fact he participates in that violence in a way. What's even stranger are the advices people gave Raymond on how to punish his mistress  prior talking to Mr. Meursault. "Mark her" they suggested, like it was a perfectly normal thing to do to a human being.
          I don't think that Meursault is unemotional or a bad person, as far as I can tell from these three chapter the whole society was like that, lonely, miserable and unemotional to one another. I hope we will find out why in the preceding chapters. I'm curious and I like it. :) 

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