Post #2

Meursault continues to float through life as the story moves on in The Stranger by Albert Camus. He is continually encountered with situation after situation that would make a normal person heartbroken or horrified, yet he never once reacts. He goes out with Marie the day his mother dies, "she seemed ver surprised to see I was wearing a black tie and she asked me if I was in mourning. I told her Maman had died. She wanted to know how long ago, so I said, yesterday" (20). When his mother dies he says, "I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed" (24). He sees Salamano beats his dog and doesn’t have any reaction, in the conversation between him and Raymond, "And once he said to me, talking about Salamano, 'If that isn't pitiful!' He asked me didn't I think it was disgusting and I said no" (28). He agrees to help Raymond trick his mistress whom he had been beating saying, "Since I didn't say anything, he asked if I'd mind doing it right then and I said no" (32). He says he doesn’t care one way or another whether he marries Marie. When Raymond is injured by the Arabs he simply smokes a cigarette and looks out at the Sea very calmly. This trend is clearly a huge part of the book. Combined with the fact that he is probably sleepwalking through life, as I talked about before, it seems that Camus is trying to make a point. The most obvious meaning that comes to my mind is that Camus is trying to tell us that there really isn’t any point to life, that nothing really matters. The way Meursault goes through life not caring about anything makes his life seem pointless and without a purpose. Seeing as how the life of the main character of Camus book has no point, it stands to reason that Camus is trying to argue that life itself has no point.