Alex Pfeffer
Aber Period 4
Chapter 1:
Meursault is cold, detached, and indifferent. When Meursault finds out his mother has died, his main priority is to figure out when his mother died. There is no emotional reaction. Meursault is neither happy nor unhappy, but merely indifferent.
Although Meursault tends to ignore the emotional, and social contexts of situations, he is not apathetic when it comes to the physical and practical. In chapter 1, Meursault focuses on the practical details surrounding his mother’s death. He is worried about borrowing clothes from a friend, and he is much more interested in the caretaker’s story about the vigil length correlating with the body decay time.
During the funeral, Meursault does not feel sadness, but he…show more content… He observes close to nothing about the personality of Marie, but he carefully describes their physical interactions. The description of lying on the float with Marie and looking up at the sky is unusually emotionally charged for The Stranger. In this passage, it even seems that Meursault is happy.
While watching from his balcony, Meursault does not express any sort of judgment about the people he sees. All he does is simply notices their primary characteristics. Meursault does not see these people as individuals with thoughts and lives, but rather as just another part of his Sunday. Meursault acts as a detached observer throughout the book. Meursault will not commit to either condemning or defending Salamano’s treatment of his dog. Similarly, while Meursault is not necessarily supportive of Raymond’s treatment of his mistress, he does not speak out against it.
Meursault and Raymond are both rather indifferent when it comes to the world around them. However, Raymond is a foil to Meursault. Meursault is very amoral, while Raymond appears to be immoral, as shown by the treatment of his mistress.
Through these chapters, Meursault is once again indifferent to most of life’s proceedings, aside from the basic physical aspects. Meursault personifies the belief that life is meaningless, and therefore he is a pushover and a