What Is Meursault's Perception Of Life

Ahmed Hanafy
Mr. Calvert
English period 1
12 December, 2014 By showing how Meursault's consciousness changes through the course of events, Camus shows how facing the possibility of death does, in fact, have an effect on one's perception of life. At the start of the novel, Camus emphasizes Meursault's unnoticeable ideas towards death, especially his mom’s. However, Camus does not make Meursault's awareness of death strong enough to cause a self-realization. Despite his tendency for living in the present, Meursault is oblivious to the fact that every choice he makes is made without him knowing that no matter what choice is made, he will ultimately die. Meursault is subject to his own practiced responses, completely unaware that they express
Camus does not have Meursault think on the meaning of death too much until Meursault is in prison awaiting his trial. Before his trial, Meursault wastes the time in prison by by reading over the newspaper story about the murder of a Czech, and by recreating a mental picture of his room at home. In this connection, Meursault is very timid and aware even though his lack of self-awareness and emotion. He is especially sensitive to beauty: the beach, the the reed music, swimming, making love to Marie, and Sunday. He even says that if forced to live in a hollow tree trunk, he would be happy to just "watch the sky, passing birds, and clouds" (Camus 95). After his trial, he no longer thinks about his memories or passes the time in the useless way he normally used to spend Sundays at home. This represents a shift in character and a beginning of the self-realization of death and how near it is. At first, Meursault dwells on thoughts of escape. He cannot reconcile the contingency of his sentence with the mechanical certainty of the process that inevitably leads to death (Camus 137). When he gives up trying to find a loophole, he finds his mind going back to the fear that dawn would bring the guards who would lead him to be killed. Once he really, honestly admits death's grip, he allows himself to consider the chance of a successful court; of being set free to live. Now he begins
Meursault sees his own impulses as natural. When Marie asks whether he would say yes to any girl who proposed marriage to him, he says, "Naturally" (Camus 42). When he comes upon the Arab on the beach, he says, again,"Naturally, I gripped Raymond's gun" (Camus 58). Intellectually lazy and unjudgemental, Meursault does not see his "natural" impulses as signs of being a stranger to society; in his own words, he "gave up the idea [of defending himself in court] out of laziness" (Camus 66). This laziness is eminent and noticeable Meursault's attitude so much that he assumes everything is equal if he doesn't think about it: one woman is as good a woman as another; shooting the Arab is just the same as not shooting him. By highlighting that one decision is like another, Camus expresses how decisions in life do not have a greater meaning since all decisions inevitably end in