He Has No Heart

Schofer, Peter. "The Rhetoric of the Text: Casualty, Metaphor, and Irony." Modern Critical Interpretations: Albert Camus's The Stranger. (2001): 127-137. Print.

Peter Schofer argues that there is a series of casual links that show that Meursault is incapable of supplying in his narrative and which leads us to seeing his act as “absurd”, yet Meursault is quite capable of observing, understanding, and inferring causes. Schofer explains that Meursault gives an accumulation of material causes for his actions that almost acts as a sort of overkill to suppress any thinking and any introspection. This relative absence of casual links is intimately tied to the narrative style, where Meursault provides sequences of events but no casual links about his personal feelings. Schofer demonstrates that in most of the text, we are given a series of observations and actions without motivations. Therefore, the scene of the murder is not at all exceptional except that it is a murder, not a narrative of everyday events. Schofer argues that Meursault’s inability to grieve indicates that he has no heart, thus explaining his crime. In other words, a lack of heart leads to the insensitivity toward his mother and towards the murder victim.

Peter Schofer demonstrates Meursault’s use of casual links throughout his narration to tie events together, without showing any kind of emotions towards them. If Meursault does give an excuse for any of his actions, then it is a shallow excuse that blocks him from having to deeply think and to show any emotions or feelings. For example, when Meursault is on the bus on the way to his mother’s funeral, rather than thinking of his dead mother, he falls asleep, and says that “it was probably because of all the rushing around, and on top of that the bumpy ride, the smell of gasoline, and the glare of the sky and the road, that I dozed off.” Schofer’s argument about not providing any personal feelings demonstrates Meursault’s indifference towards the world. Many critics have come up with in-depth reasons why Meursault has this indifferent personality, but Schofer simply says that it “indicates that he has no heart.” This point of view is important to consider, because it is blunt and obvious, and it is also one of the first impressions that may come to a readers head before further researching and analyzing Meursault’s personality and behavior.