Stranger Journal 1

In the first couple chapters, Camus repeatedly uses very short sentences, and references things as being small.  He also portrays Meursault as being a very simple person, saying and doing very simple things.  Sometimes even doing simple things is hard for him to do; he ate his eggs without bread "because [he] didn't feel like going downstairs to buy some"(21).  This simplicity makes Meursault appear very lazy or uninterested in others.  For example, he describes every little thing that happens to him and it kind of seems like he may have some kind of attention deficit.  He does this during the vigil for his mother, yet he never even bothers to even think about her.  His mother had just died and he never even once thought about how she had impacted his life or anything.  The ironic thing is his reaction to his mothers old friends that were sitting there "sucking on the insides of their cheeks and making these weird smacking noises"(11).  He says "I even had the impression that the dead woman lying in front of them didn't mean anything to them" when he himself was sitting there emotionless the whole time.

Another thing that bothered me (going back to his laziness) is that he is always either sleeping, or feeling tired.  During the vigil, which is a period of staying awake during the time usually spent sleeping (usually to pray or keep watch), he falls asleep.  Meursault really does not seem to have any feelings of grief or sadness towards his mother, let alone any emotions at all.  On the first page, he says his boss "should have offered his condolences.  But he probably will when he sees I'm in mourning"(3).  But for those who have read the book, we know that he did not really ever mourn.  Eventually he is even tried for not mourning the death of his mother.

His character is developed further by repeatedly saying "it wasn't my fault"(3).  Telling his boss he needed days off from work because of his mother, he tries to back himself up by saying "it wasn't my fault".  He realizes that his boss was mad because he was getting four days off from work but then thought "it isn't my fault if they buried Maman yesterday instead of today"(19).  He doesn't acknowledge his bosses disappointment by basically saying that because it wasn't his fault, he had to go to his funeral.  It seems like Meursault doesn't even want to go to the funeral for emotional reasons, but just because it wasn't his fault.  When he was swimming with Marie, he also said "I felt like telling her it wasn't my fault" that his mother died (20).

What really throws me off and makes me mad is Meursaults lack of emotional feelings, towards other people and even himself.  It seems like the only things that matter to him is eating, sleeping, and just aimlessly walking around Algiers.  The reason why Camus would create a protagonist like Meursault is very hard to see.  Meursault makes the book very bland but at the same time it kind of makes the reader want to find out what he is going to do next.  He confuses the reader so much so that they just want to keep reading on.