“But soon I lost interest in his movements; my temples were throbbing and I could hardly drag myself along. After that everything went with a rush; and also with such precision and matter-of- factness that I remember hardly any details”
Mersault, at least throughout the first chapter doesn’t seem to connect to any of the characters around him. He doesn’t empathize, or seem remotely comfortable around them. This detached air was most clearly shown in the quote above, where he describes his experience of his mother’s funeral. He doesn’t remember any details, which seems strange. That could stem from two possible causes, extreme grief or extreme apathy.
Either way, it stood out to me that Mersault was so incapable of recalling the events of his own mother’s funeral. Most people would use that event as a method of receiving final closure, of saying goodbye to his mother for one final time. He does the opposite, scrubbing her completely from his recollections. This shows that he is out of touch with his own emotions at his mother's death, and unable to express them completely.
This lack of self-expression reveals that Mersault is not only a stranger to his mother and his peers, but a stranger to himself
No comments:
Post a Comment