PORTRAYING MEURSAULT FROM AN EXISTENTIAL EYE Pdf
PORTRAYING MEURSAULT FROM AN EXISTENTIAL EYE
“Meursault is not a piece of social wreckage, but a poor and naked enamoured of the sun that leaves no shadow.
Far from being bereft of all feeling, he is animated by passion that is deep because it is stubborn, a passion for the absolute, and for truth.”
- Camus, “Preface” to “The Stranger”.
Camus’s antihero, Meursault is condemned in a court of law, not necessarily for the crime of killing an Arab under a blinding North African sun, but rather he refuses to “play the game”. He remains aloof from the preoccupations of those who are judging him; he is incapable of lies and deceit and remains on margins of a respectful society. He is different to social standing and prestige, gets pleasure from nature and hedonistic activity, shows no remorse for his crime even when the magistrate tries to convert him by dramatically drawing his attention to the figure of the crucified Christ. The main way in which Camus’s hero is radically different from the mass of men and women in his insistence on telling the truth even when diplomacy suggests he should pretend to feelings he does not have – “He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately the society feels threatened.”
Camus was disgusted with a universe inhabited by people who were oozing with self-satisfaction and complacency at a time when totalitarian regimes of the right and left were reducing the individual to nothingness and which were capable of justifying the most terrible massacres in the name of vague value system. Camus uses his character to shake us out of our complacency and to make us see the futility of the lives, the majority of us live. Camus’s novel can be regarded as
Meursault’s “journey to consciousness”, full of intensity and drama. It opens with the news of Meursault’s mother’s death. In fact while following his mother’s funeral procession to her burial place, Meursault notes-“I caught myself thinking what an agreeable walk I might have
“Meursault is not a piece of social wreckage, but a poor and naked enamoured of the sun that leaves no shadow.
Far from being bereft of all feeling, he is animated by passion that is deep because it is stubborn, a passion for the absolute, and for truth.”
- Camus, “Preface” to “The Stranger”.
Camus’s antihero, Meursault is condemned in a court of law, not necessarily for the crime of killing an Arab under a blinding North African sun, but rather he refuses to “play the game”. He remains aloof from the preoccupations of those who are judging him; he is incapable of lies and deceit and remains on margins of a respectful society. He is different to social standing and prestige, gets pleasure from nature and hedonistic activity, shows no remorse for his crime even when the magistrate tries to convert him by dramatically drawing his attention to the figure of the crucified Christ. The main way in which Camus’s hero is radically different from the mass of men and women in his insistence on telling the truth even when diplomacy suggests he should pretend to feelings he does not have – “He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately the society feels threatened.”
Camus was disgusted with a universe inhabited by people who were oozing with self-satisfaction and complacency at a time when totalitarian regimes of the right and left were reducing the individual to nothingness and which were capable of justifying the most terrible massacres in the name of vague value system. Camus uses his character to shake us out of our complacency and to make us see the futility of the lives, the majority of us live. Camus’s novel can be regarded as
Meursault’s “journey to consciousness”, full of intensity and drama. It opens with the news of Meursault’s mother’s death. In fact while following his mother’s funeral procession to her burial place, Meursault notes-“I caught myself thinking what an agreeable walk I might have