Is Meursault Apathetic?

After reading Vikter Frankl's article "Man's Search for Meaning," I looked at some of the blog posts people wrote about the article to get ideas. Two of the three blog posts I read discussed how Meursault is similar to Frankl once Frankl becomes apathetic. I thought that this conclusion was strange and indicative of a misreading of The Stranger. Apathy is a lack of emotion, and I think it would be wrong minded to say that Meursault lacked emotion.

The reason Meursault was sentenced to death was that the jury could not understand that anyone may express or experience emotions in any way contrary to the popularized forms. This inability (or refusal) to understand Meursault's emotions led them to conclude that he had none. Meursault clearly does have emotions. He is irritated on the beach. He is, at first, frustrated and bored in jail. He is excited and happy when he is being led to the guillotine. Just because he does not cry at his mother's funeral does not mean he is apathetic. Just because he does not think he loves Marie does not mean he is apathetic (this should be fairly obvious to present-day readers with the prominence of "hook-up culture").  Apathy can also mean uninterested, but Meursault is very interested in water and people.  He just has different interests from society's.

I think Frankl is much more similar to Lear. He finds that "it is not physical pain which hurts the most...it is the mental agony" (36). In the storm, Lear also finds that he is almost oblivious to physical pain because he is preoccupied with his mental state. He also says that he "understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved" (49).  This statement perfectly explains why Lear tells Cordelia that they could be happy in prison together.