Proposal of Two Meursaults

Solomon, Robert C. “Is Meursault a Stranger to the Truth?” Readings on The Stranger. Ed. Derek C. Maus. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2001. 61-75. Print

Solomon addresses his idea of Meursault as an existentialist man who neither lies nor tells the truth, because he cannot reach the level of consciousness where truth and falsity can be clarified. As the narrator of the novel, Meursault does not judge; he describes and observes. Solomon expresses how Meursault’s “indifference is a falsification of emotions” (75). He cannot be true to his feelings, not only because he does not know and understand them, but because he cannot even have them without making judgments. He is minimally self-conscious with only few thoughts in which he does not reflect on. Meursault’s “true feelings” are an emotionally stripped representation of human experience. Solomon states that “Meursault, for the first part of the novel, is an ideal sartrian pre-reflective consciousness, pure experience without reflection, always other than, but also nothing other than what he is conscious of at the moment” (64). Solomon argues that it is the “first-person standpoint that Camus allows the Kantian or Husserlian Ego to report on the utter blandness of Meursault’s pre-reflective consciousness as it matter-of-factly describes his world” (65). The problem is that the narrator of part I “cannot consistently be the same Meursault who is unreflectively experiencing. It must be another Meursault, a reflective Meursault.” (65). Solomon claims that the “trueness” for the reflective narrator would appear to be the bare, un-interpreted, and comment-less reporting of human experience of the pre-reflective Meursault’s. Also, he explains how there are “gaps in the narration where feelings ought to be in exactly the same way that there is an abyss where Meursault’s ‘soul’ ought to be” (67). Thus, Solomon justifies that Meursault of part I is an impossible character because he is the reflective narrator and the un-reflective bearer of experience.

Solomon’s idea about two Meursaults, the pre-reflective character and the reflective narrator, is relevant because it allows a reader to think about and categorize Meursault’s indifference as the result of two Meursaults in the narration, instead of completely labeling Meursault as inwardly indifferent. The reader could rationalize his indifference by the result of the complications that arise between Meursault’s existential role as character and inability to interpret and reflect on events and his role as narrator to be reflective. Solomon portrays the narrator of part I as “another Meursault,” which would enhance and highlight Meursault’s indifference and make it easily apparent for a reader, who wasn’t aware of “another Meursault” as the narrator. Another relevance of Solomon’s argument involves how the “gaps in narration” allow a reader to consider the possibility that these gaps are created by the effect of a pre-reflective character of Meursault as the reflective narrator. Even though these gaps may be what initially drives a reader to consider Meursault as indifferent, Solomon’s view on the gaps in the narration allow the reader to contemplate and analyze these gaps as the results from the complications between roles and the crossing of paths of the two Meursaults.