Meursault is a man that committed a crime but I believe he was punished for the wrong reasons. He admitted to killing the Arab and in his story gave an honest reason for why he went through with the act and was laughed at because they thought it was ridiculous. Instead, the jury believed that he had some built up psychological issues, the claims of which were backed by him not crying at his mother's funeral. I feel that people were too quick to judge Meursault as a sociopath and the reasons that they gave just weren't fair.
First off, during his mother's funeral he didn't really express any feelings towards his mothers passing and as readers we get the passenger seat on Meursault's view of things. I think it's strange that he didn't cry because if I lost someone who was that close to me I would be a mess, but the thing is I'm not Meursault. He's dealing with his loss by drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette and I think that is just fine. He's not crying his eyes out because he doesn't care but more because he knows it won't bring her back. The one thing that I sympathized with the most was him not wanting to see his mother in the open casket. It's hard to really grasp that you'll never see someone again, so he probably didn't want that last image of her to be one in a casket.
I think Camus was trying to make Meursault a coin on its edge, neither heads nor tails. Loss is handled differently by everyone and I think when people see the Meursault coin on its side, they want to call it for being on a side that it's not. He presents himself as neutral/indifferent and the people around him are supposed to decide which extreme he's leaning towards. In this case he's not rolling around crying and at the same time him attending showing that he cares. When you take him at face value, he's just a guy that doesn't express his feelings outwards. For example, he doesn't really react to Marie's marriage proposal because he feels that it won't change their relationship at all. Again, I think he's just a coin sitting on its side waiting for the people around him to tell him whether he's heads or tails.
I agree with the analogy of Meursault being a coin on its side. He really doesn't take a stance on anything (the first time he even takes action is when he kills the Arab) because he just doesn't care. He barely even tries to defend himself. At his hearings he mostly tunes out and just acknowledges that they are telling him who he is and why he did what he did. I wanted Meursault to stand up and refuse to accept what people are saying about him, but I know this isn't realistic because he doesn't really care about life.
ReplyDeleteHis passive behavior can be good because it (for the most part) has kept him out of trouble, but in this case he needed to fight for himself. He might not care about life, but he enjoys living, and I feel like he should have argued more for himself so he could have a little bit more time doing the things he loves.
I also agree that Meursault was punished for the wrong reason. When I began reading the book, the title perplexed me. I assume we would we meet a random, different figure, (i.e. the stranger) and make assumptions about him. Instead, Camus actually put us in the mind of that figure. This gave me an interesting perspective because it made me wonder if we would treat him the way the jury had, had we not been in his shoes the whole time. He coped with things in his life differently than most people, and some of us came to the conclusion that there may be something mentally wrong with him. Of course, there's nothing wrong with being different--until you kill somebody, but the jury overlooked that fact entirely. By the end of the story, they were more focused on his psyche than his actions. I also really like your analogy of the coin on its side. I never thought of it that way before, but think that's a really accurate description of his situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that he was not punished for the right reason (although, in my opinion, his punishment was just), and I feel that if the jury truly convicted him because of his previous behaviour (such as not crying when his mother dies), rather than the fact that he committed murder, they were not acting within their rights. While not feeling empathy toward one's mother is hard to understand, it is not inherently bad and doesn't harm the rest of the community, so it does not merit any sort of punishment. Even if it does, however, we do not have the right to determine that, because we don't understand such people at all, and the only basis for our decision would be prejudice.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone here in that the reasoning behind Meursault's punishment seems unjust. However, I also don't see the people who convict someone because of their (the public's) xenophobia as unrealistic. It's never been uncommon for people to fear, and direct anger, towards outsiders, people who are different, or people with whom it's hard to empathize. Meursault fits into the latter two categories. But I think that Camus wasn't trying to convict Meursault on just convictions -- his main goal was to argue against the death penalty, and had he sentenced Meursault to death for homicide, it wouldn't have seemed as unjust to us as it does. It wouldn't serve his purpose as well to create a more reasonable conviction, since we wanted to show the way in which the death penalty was unjust.
ReplyDeleteI agree, especially about the detail with the casket. I also think that we as readers were quick to judge Meursault. I think that trying to "diagnose" him misses the point of the book, or at least weakens it--that he was condemned to death not because he committed murder but because he saw the world differently.
ReplyDeleteI think that his lack of emotion or care about Marie's desire to marry him is one of the more telling scenes about his feelings and how he displays them. When she asks him if he loves her, he says that he doesn't feel like he does. He does have emotions, but he just seems to think that they don't matter as much as logic, and he's able to extremely easily push them aside. He legitimately thinks that it won't change anything about how their relationship functions, telling Marie that marriage isn't an important thing, but he sees that it'll make her happy, and he wants that, so he's willing to marry a woman he doesn't truly love.
ReplyDeleteYour analogy of Meursault as a coin on it's side is very interesting and thought provoking and I agree that even though he has a different way of feeling and expressing emotion, particularly his mourning for his mother, that that doesn't make him any more of a criminal then he already is. The court's infatuation with him and his mental condition is unfounded.
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