Thursday, September 24, 2015
Maursault: On trial for Murder or Mother's love
Meursault does belong in prison, that is a fact. He murdered a man for no other reason than the sun was too hot on his head that day, but does he belong on death row? No. In his trial he was judged unfairly, instead of being tried for murder he was tried for if he loved his mother or not. The prosecutor asked him and his witness questions about his mothers funeral, if he cried or not and their life together. He then judged Meursault for getting into a relationship with Marie only a day after his mothers funeral, which lead the jury to despise Meursault, not for killing the Arab but for not loving his mother which eventually lead to his death.
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I completely and fully agree with you, I think it says a lot about our society when Camus shows people sentencing Meursault to death for his lack or different way of displaying emotions or sentiment. I often think emotion triumphs reason in many cases of people's perceptions in this and of this book.
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ReplyDeleteThis is what was going though my mind. I see that in this book, people often expect others to behave in a way that wouldn't feel natural for them. Meursault unfortunately falls a victim of this in many instances, because he does not behave as others feel he should, he is judged and punished for having his own way of living.
ReplyDeleteThe trial in the book was definitely unfair. But, I think that was to further emphasize the bad nature of social constructs, according to existentialism. Since justice and, obviously, the court system is a social construct, to trust and believe in them is bad faith. So, by making the trial obviously unfair, he further shows the bad nature of social constructs.
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