Albert Camus' "The Stranger"

He takes a jitney to the funeral, sh atomic number 18s coffee and cigarettes with the doorman of the rest home his mother was active in, and decides against having his mother's coffin opened:

While he was going up to the coffin I told him not to trouble.

"Eh? What's that?" he exclaimed. "You don't want me to? . . . "

He put the screwdriver back in his pocket and stared at me. I realized then that I shouldn't have said "No," and it do me feel rather embarrassed (Camus 6).

Camus is foreshadowing Meursault's eventual downf whole. The eccentric person cannot feign emotions that he does not have, and, though his responses are authentic, they are frequently contrary to societal convention. He is, above all other characters in the book, fearlessly, brutally h nonpareilst with himself. At the venture of offending people and, eventually, at the risk of his life, he is unwilling to bend to others' expectations of him.

What others in the novel expect from him is an assent to the established social order. The world is a place in which mothers are mourned with copious and highly public tears, where romantic love is an arrogant prerequisite to a happy marriage, where one's friends are of the highest class, and where remorse for ignoring these surmisals is mandatory. Meursault, with his disinterest in such expectations, has made himself a everlasting(a) scapegoat. His response to the world, while eminently reasonable, is perpetually al

Certainly Meursault takes many actions and expresses many opinions that appear, seen through the lense of bourgeois society, monstrous. Marie, Meursault's girlfriend, suggests that they get married. The societal expectation is that love ought to be the primary driving force in the relationship, that marriage is a grave and sacred responsibility, and that one approaches marriage with the appropriately rudimentary respect. Meursault, in his casual, disinterested way, rejects these premises. His response to Marie is marked by indifference, though his intentions are not cruel:

Ellison, David R. Understanding Albert Camus. Columbia: U S issueh Carolina P, 1990.

Meursault must find this authentic life outdoor(a) the boundaries of society.

Society, after all, rejects him precisely because he is authentic: "Society as Camus portrays it is duplicitous, capricious, and lethal as need, with one vital difference: fate makes no claim to rationality, while society does make one" (Lazare 161). One of society's claims to rationality can be found in the religious sphere, and Camus portrays Meursault's final epiphany in the presence of a minister. The assumption is that any dying man would want the graces of the church and the leniency of god before dying. The priest who visits Meursault in his cell comes out of both compassion and societal obligation. Visiting prisoners is his job. Offering acquittal is his job. Meursault is no different than the others. The priest tries, as he is mandatory to by the set of societal rules that he adheres to, to engender in Meursault a sense of guilt and a need for forgiveness. His attempts assist him nothing. Meursault is not interested in the priest or God or the afterlife. He is bored by them and considers them to be questions of picayune importance. Eventually, after much prodding and provocation on behalf of the priest, Meursault begins " hollo at the top of my voice. I hurled insults at him. I told him not to waste his rotten prayers on me" (Ca
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