Absurdity as a Factor of Meursault's Indifference

Showalter, English Jr. The Stranger: Humanity and the Absurd. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1996. Print.

Showalter’s view on The Stranger is that Camus tried to remain true to his vision of the absurd, the meaningless of existence, through to the very end and avoid the normal existentialist conclusion of the absurd as an excuse for a rise of faith and as to prove something. Showalter argues that Camus’s first-person narration was intended to be hard to distinguish exactly when and how Meursault speaks. This is a way to emphasize the strange inconsistency in Meursault, where the story he tells is in some extent of a story that is forced to be spoken. Showalter argues that the brief first-person narrative portrays its hero’s story as an unemotional confession, where the narration serves to highlight the intellectual disabilities within the character, Meursault. The narration dramatizes the problems of representation, communication, and interpretation and categorizes Meursault’s inability to give a convincing explanation as a failure of language, instead of a failure of the judicial system or the code of society. The brief first-person narrative, involving suppressed dialogue, enabled Camus to feel silent while writing The Stranger, and thus allowing him to create a fictional image of life within the absurd. Showalter argues that Camus “uses Meursault’s mind as the glass partition through which the world is viewed,” where the “technique makes the narrator a purely passive observer” (12). This technique’s effect is similar to the effects of observing someone in a phone booth from the outside, where all we see is the gestures, but do not hear the conversation. Showalter claims, “Such a person would appear absurd” (12).

Showalter’s suggestions of Meursault’s inconsistency and the difficulties of characterizing his exact speech in his telling of the story lead to different interpretations of the story along with different circumstances for who a reader will be able and willing to identify with. Showalter’s idea of the intentional, hard-to-distinguish narration and Meursault’s constant and strange inconsistency allow a reader different perspectives of viewing Meursault, where “indifferent” may not be the correct or only label. The argument involving the creation of a fictional image of life within the absurd through the use of a first-person narrative suggests the presence of a potential easiness for a reader to relate and identify with Meursault. Especially since this creation was enabled by Camus’s ability to theoretically feel silent and as a part of this life within the absurd while writing the novel. The argument of Meursault’s mind as a glass partition that creates a passive observing narrator recommends to a reader a different way of viewing, reading, and interpreting the narrative. The narrator is placing the reader in a perspective that reflects and easily relates to Meursault, which may help to analyze and measure the extent of sympathy a reader feels for Meursault. The effects of this technique suggest a reader to reevaluate first impressions of Meursault as indifferent and consider the absurdity as a factor of an “apparent” indifference.

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.