Meaning to Life? Mersault's Little World.
At first glance Mersault is an unique, depressed, almost cruel character. He seems so ready to distance himself from all and any relationships, while purging himself of all feelings of longing and attachment. So we (I myself as i too am guilty of this) dismissed him, confined him to a box. Four walls where we put the all characters that are to cold or miserable for our "rose tinted" tastes. However, after a enlightening discussion during class it became clear that maybe we judged this man too fast and too harshly. That maybe we need to look through his world with a different lenses, one that is not as "rose tinted". And to try to understand that his distancing from family, friends, love, attention, or achievement, is his freedom of bonds and material meaningless. Mersault understands the undeniable truth about our universe, that what people hold onto most to keep them sane is actually insane. That the "distant light" most people strive for isn't there, it in itself is a false hope created by an establishment that has passed down laws of conformity for millennia. Mersault gets this, and as most people reading this book judge this man on his distancing, self induced depression, lack of compass, or compassion. They actual misunderstand, Mersault, he is not depressed or lost, hes actually pleasantly happy and at peace, just going along with the flow of life not getting caught up in meaningless attachment, or getting lost in things long passed.
I was actually wrote my blog post about how I could not reconcile the fact that Meursault seemed to be a happy, honest man with his "evil" actions. Your analysis definitely sways me to believe that he actually is happy because he understands more than we do. I wish I read your post before I wrote mine!
ReplyDeleteI like how you tied what happened in the book to what we learned in class today. I actually thought that Meursault was actually keeping things deep inside until he shot the Arab and let all his frustrations out, but today in class I think that he was more happy than sad because base what we went over in class he was more free because he accepted pain and death instead of fearing them.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you and I too believe that Meursault gets society way more than any character in the book. I also believe that the reason Camus pairs Meursault with Marie is because they are almost complete opposites on their ideals of existentialism. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you, rather than dismissing him I put him on a pedestal. I thought he was such a unique character that I focused only on him for the first few chapters. After our class discussion however I began to realize that he is not as unique from other characters as I had thought him to be.
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