The Stranger (2024)

FAQs

What does Meursault mean by seeing him soon enough? ›

Meursault says that he has nothing to say to the chaplain, that he doesn't feel like talking, and that he'll be seeing the clergyman soon enough as it is. What does Meursault mean by "seeing him soon enough"? ( Pg. 108) He means that the chaplain accompanies condemned men to their executions.

[L'Etranger: Meursault commits the unmotivated murder of an Arab on the beach in Algiers and is brought to justice. Because he does not cry at his mother's funeral he is viewed with suspicion and finally condemned to death.

Meursault represents indifference in The Stranger. He is indifferent to the world and, as he realizes in the end of the novel, the world is indifferent to everything. This is a key feature of Absurdism, a literary trend led by Camus.

Meursault is found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to death by guillotine.

What is the message in the stranger? Camus wrote The Stranger to explain the philosophy of Absurdism, which claims that there is no inherent meaning in life, and that individuals must find their own ways to confront the indifference and meaninglessness of life.

At the end of The Stranger, Meursault is able to die happy because he (like Ivan Ilyich) is able to come to terms with himself as a constituent part of existence, and so live authentically.

It is a supreme irony, that it was Meursault's “aspergic” inability to understand nuance and nonverbal communication, that led him to move forward “to get out of the sun”, unaware, until too late, that this would be interpreted as aggression by his otherwise passive antagonist, who, in response, unsheathed and raised a ...

The last line -- "I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate" (123) -- underscores the freedom Meursault found in death. By suffering final judgment from the world, he realizes that he is no longer bound to conform to their standards.

Meursault admits to himself that he feels little regret; after all, the man whom he shot was a stranger; he was only an Arab, and, to Meursault, the prosecutor is overdoing the emphasis on Meursault's regret.

Meursault states that the problem with the guillotine is that "you had no chance at all," that the condemned was "forced into… moral collaboration" hoping that the blade killed him the first time (since, if it failed, it would be dropped again and again until it worked).

Why does Meursault feel that nobody has the right to cry over Maman? ›

Meursault feels vindicated from the moral crime he is indirectly charged with because he realizes that no one should have mourned for Maman. She had taken the chance to really live life at the end once freed from her life obligations.

Eventually, Meursault is found guilty of murder with malice aforethought and is sentenced to death by guillotine. As he waits for his impending death, he obsesses over the possibility of his appeal being accepted.

The murder of the Arab was what Meursault was on the beach to accomplish in the first place. When he shot the Arab four more times, it was his attempt at feeling misery, or unhappiness. Meursault thought that these attempts at emotion were good enough for the world to consider him a normal person.

The Arab is lying on the beach, and when Meursault approaches the Arab, he holds up his knife without ever rising. Meursault, overcome by the heat of the day, is provoked by the glint of sunlight coming off the knife and shoots the Arab five times, killing him with the first shot.

His experiences with the death penalty—from seeing his father clamour for the death of another person to witnessing an execution first-hand—made him realise that the killing had to stop. He no longer believed that the death penalty could be justified.

After speaking with the chaplain, Meursault no longer views his impending execution with hope or despair. He accepts death as an inevitable fact and looks forward to it with peace. This realization of death's inevitability constitutes Meursault's triumph over society.

At the beginning of this chapter, Meursault very briefly notes that he has refused to see the prison chaplain for the third time; then he dismisses the subject as quickly as he dismissed the chaplain and turns to another subject. He speaks of hope.

When the prosecutor acts triumphant in response to the director's testimony, Meursault thinks, "for the first time in years I had this stupid urge to cry, because I could feel how much all these people hated me." Hearing the caretaker describe him smoking and drinking coffee, Meursault thinks "for the first time I ...

Meursault desires so much to be free now, to be able to embrace Marie, despite this sea of confusion, to feel her body through her thin dress. She assures him that he will be acquitted and that they will go swimming together again, and says that he must not give up hope.