Midterm Part 3

Part 3 – What is Stranger than Metamorphosing into a Grendel?

            One’s “interior world” is inferior to the outside world’s influences. This is clearly exemplified through Albert Camus’s “The Stranger”. In the stranger the protagonist, Meursault does not follow his society’s “normal” conventions and morals. Meursault feels indifferent towards everything in the world. He does not care what he does or who he is with as long as he is able to be happy and do what he wants. As the story progresses he starts to believe that he is not the only one who is indifferent, the world is indifferent as well. However, other people in the society do not think that way which is proven through events leading up to Meursault’s trail and his trial as well.

Meursault is affected greatly by nature, one of the “outside world’s influences”, for example when it becomes too hot, he quickly become impatient and agitated which is shown in chapter 6 when he is on the beach with Raymond and also when he returns to the beach where he shot one of the Arabs five times. When he shot the Arab, his thoughts were simple, “you could either shoot or not shoot.” As the story went on, Meursault was called to trial for his murder, yet Meursault still remained uncaring as he entered his trial maintaining his “inner world” ideals trying to exert himself upon the world as best as he could.

During Meursault’s trial, the outside world’s influences crush his “interior world”. When he talks to his lawyer, the lawyer portrays a sense of disgust towards Meursault showing that his lawyer cared about how Meursault responded rather than being indifferent as Meursault is. As he went on with his trial, he noticed the testimonies that the people he had made contact with gave were different than what he had thought happened, from when he offered a cigarette to the caretaker when his mother had died to him shooting the Arab.  They had given meaning to his otherwise meaningless actions, actions he did not really think too much about but just did. In the end, he has an outburst, breaking his indifferent disposition proving that the outside world’s influences are stronger and much more superior to Meursault’s.