For this blog post, I have decided to focus on Monsieur Meursault and his effectiveness as a narrator. Now, since this post is based off the first chapter of The Stranger, it probably won’t be a reliable analysis later on, since I assume that my opinion of Meursault will change as the novel progresses. But, here goes nothing...
So, when we are first introduced to Meursault, I couldn’t help myself from being very judgemental of his character. I mean, his mother has just died, and while at the vigil, he refuses to see her body for the last time, even though he hasn’t seen her much in the past year, and all he can think about is this woman crying. “Soon one of the woman started crying...I thought she’d never stop...The woman kept on crying. It surprised me, because I didn’t know who she was. I wished I didn’t have to listen to her anymore” (10). His mother has just died, and all Meursault can think about is how annoying this weeping, mourning woman is. Also, when all the other elderly people enter for the vigil, the most stand out characteristic of these people, to Meursault, is their wrinkles. “What struck me most about their faces was that I couldn’t see their eyes, just a faint glimmer in a nest of wrinkles” (10). Seriously? His mother’s friends at her nursing home come to pay their respects, and all he can think about his the wrinkles on their faces?
Now, if we weren’t given context, I would find Meursault very distasteful. But, on the first page, he tells us “for now, it’s almost as if Maman weren’t dead. After the funeral, though, the case will be closed, and everything will have a more official feel to it” (3). At this moment, Meursault is feeling a sort of numbness to his mother’s death, which is a totally acceptable way of dealing with his situation. Everyone has different methods of grievance and Meursault’s way of denying it all it just what he finds most comfortable. I mean, we already can see that he isn’t a very emotional character, and so pushing his feelings back and acting like it’s just a normal day is a very legitimate coping method for him. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want people to see him grieving. He is a very paranoid man, stating that, even when his mother’s nursing home friends come to pay their respects, “[he] had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge him” (10). With every person he meets and interacts with, he feels like they are there to judge him, and so, to seemingly save face, he acts aloof and unaffected by things happening around him. It’s almost as if he thinks people will judge him if he becomes too emotional (when in reality, we would see it strange if one didn’t emotionally break down), and so he moves through the whole funeral process without becoming emotionally attached to the event/ process.
Because of all of this, I find Meursault a very intriguing character. As it’s been said in class, we aren’t really sure if we’ve seen the real Monsieur Meursault yet. Like in Gregor’s case, we are introduced to the narrator at a very pivotal moment in his life. We don’t know for sure what Meursault was like before his mother’s death, we are just left to see how he will be after. Meursault can be a very sympathetic character because at times, he is very relatable. But he can also be very secretive and introverted, and so, to me, he seems like an untrustworthy narrator because I feel like he’s holding back things from us. We can’t see the full picture of his life because he has yet to share it with us, so we are left in the dark until we are hopefully enlightened later on.
At times, this secretive quality really annoys me. Like when he just speeds through his mother’s funeral like it’s not big deal, just focusing on how he is going to go to bed at the end of the day and sleep well. Part of me is saying that I should forgive him because he is going through a troubling time in his life, but I’m also wondering if this is the real Meursault. In that case, I’m not sure I will enjoy this limited access to information. “After that, everything seemed to happen so fast, so deliberately, so naturally that I don’t remember any of it anymore” (17). I suppose I can relate to wanting to block out unpleasant memories in one’s life, but I’m not so sure that that’s what he is doing. I don’t think he’s trying to block these harsh feelings, I just don’t think he feels very attached to them to begin with. Part of this could be attributed to the fact that he hasn’t visited his mother very often, for the inconvenience it causes him to travel to the nursing home, and so he doesn’t have that much of an emotional attachment to his mother. (I wonder how his relationship was with his mother before he stopped visiting. We get glimpses that it wasn’t really a good one because she was constantly bored. But I kind of want to know more. I know, I’m a greedy reader. Sorry.). In any case, I’m either hoping that Meursault will change his narration style, or I will come to truly understand why he seems so emotionally unattached to almost everything in his life. Right now, Meursault’s methods and actions are stranger-esque in my mind, but I’m hoping I will get to know him as I read on.
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