Who is this guy(Mersault)? Blog Post

All right. I've read the first few chapters of The Stranger, and I understand that I the reader am expected to think that Meursault is a little lacking in human feeling because he is not that upset about his mother's death. Not for the first time in this class I have the feeling that I must be somewhat exisitential myself. When I read the opening of this book, I saw no reason to judge Mersault badly. How am I to know how close he was to his mother? So what if he didn't want to see his mother's dead body as his last memory of her. Meursault seems to me to be the type of person who can't pretend to have the feelings that society expects him to have juust to put on a show. He is respectful and spends the night at his mother's vigil. I think it is better to have your last memory of people be when they were alive. He takes an interest in the caretaker and his story about how quickly dead people have to be buried in Algeria compared to France because of the Algerian heat. He admits to himself after the long vigil that he would really like to take a walk because it was a nice day and he was in the country, "if it hadn't been for Maman." Also, after the long trip back from his mother's funeral, it was not surpirising to me that he was happy to see the lights of Algiers and know that he could go home and "sllep for twelve hours. I think most of us would feel the same way. Meursault knows that he acts differently than others. When the old people come in to see him at the vigil, he has a sense that they are judging him. This feeling doesn't make him act any differently.

Meursault always gives his honest opinion about something when asked despite what the reeaction of the questioner might be. For example, when his neighbor Raymond is talking about the sharp dressing womanizer named Salamano saying, "If that isn't pitiful," Mersault responds, "He asked me didn't I think it was disgusting and I said no." Or when Marie a former co-worker he had the hots for asked if he loved her and he responded, "it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so." He must have known that there was no way he could generate a positive reaction from her after that statement, but he still said it which tells me he is incapable of not telling the truth about how he feels. Sometimes it's better to be honest than to feed people what they want to hear, because then you won't have to deal with the effects of your lying later. If you are consistently youself, people will understand you the way you are.

Meursault seems very grounded in this world and is obvioussly not thinking alot about the future or especially an afterlife. He states the way he truly feels to others and to himself. "It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed."