Upon the recommendation of my fabulous studio art instructor, I have at last read Albert Camus's The Stranger. She asked me to read it and take note of the narrator, Meursault's, response to daily life. My teacher seemed turned off by his lack of emotional engagement-particullarly during his mother's funeral.
What can I say about Mersault? Is it wrong to that I adore him? Well, I do. This is the character for which I have spent 29 years looking. Meursault is the least self-centered narrator I have ever encountered. He does not whine, does not drown in self-reflection, and does not constantly judge the people he comes in contact with (Holden Caulfield, anyone??).
Meursault is singularly visceral-caring only about the temperature outside, the quality of food he is eating, and sleeping with his girlfriend Marie. His pleasure is derived entirely from the physical world, particularly sunlight and the ocean. He takes no pleasure in engaging with others emotionally. Meursault's quietude is at long last shattered when a sympathetic priest promises to pray for him. The narrator becomes hysterical and insists he has no need of spiritual support. He argues that it is the priest who, by only embracing the ethereal, is living a hollow life: "He wasn't even sure if he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked like I was the one who came up empty-handed."
My dear Meursault is executed at the end of the novel. But, on an evening shortly before his death, he embraces life beyond the bars: "Smells of night, earth, and salt air were cooling my temples."
song on iTunes: Any Colour You Like by Pink Floyd
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