The Stranger Journal #1

Summary

After Meursault receives news of his mother's death, he catches a bus to head to his mother's old people home in Morengo. He spends the evening in the mortuary below the home with his mother's casket, the caretaker and some of his Maman's friends. The caretaker then has Meursault sign some documents and he informs Meursault of the small, intimate funeral. Things quickly move from the funeral to the hearse, which took his Maman to the burial.

The next day, Meursault goes swimming with a former crush named Marie. They then decide to go see a movie that evening. The following morning after Marie leaves, Meursault finds himself to be bored and he wanders around his apartment. He finds himself people-watching from his apartment window. At the end of the day, he gets ready for the routine week ahead.

Personal Reaction

I find his apathetic behavior to be quite interesting. I do not understand how he could be so unaffected by his mother's death. He is not terribly thrown out of his usual routine after he hears new of his mother dying and I find that surprising. He finds other things more important than the bad news, which is quite out of the ordinary for normal human behavior. Most people have to spend time mourning and getting over a death in the family, but not Meursault. He just goes about his normal activities as if nothing had happened which is a bit hard for me to grasp.

Analysis

Camus is trying to distance the reader from the protagonist so the reader can better understand why Meursault is such an apathetic person. Meursault feels the nothing is really important in life and Camus wants to communicate to the world that things really are not that big of a deal through Meursault's characterization. When Meursault says, "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," (Camus 24) it shows the reader that the death of his mother did not have that much of an impact on him. It does not really affect his usual routine which shows that it does not reveal much importance in one's life. Death is bound to happen and with it not affecting the protagonist, it makes it easier for the reader to accept.

Research

Algiers, Algeria was a site where American troops invaded Northern Africa in something called Operation Torch. In 1942, Algiers also remained under the Vichy Government, which was a term used to describe the French government.