Within the first sentence of Albert Camus' The Stranger, narrator Meursault expresses a nonchalant, unfeeling attitude towards his mother's death. His statement that "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know" (3) demonstrates his complete disregard for an event that most people would consider tragic. However, Meursault's apathy is juxtaposed with a strange, deep sense of wrongdoing that affects his actions as the chapters progress.
Meursault's guilty conscience is made evident at multiple points in the first few chapters. When talking to his boss about taking two days off to attend the funeral, he tells his boss, "It's not my fault" (3). Later, when Meursault is surrounded by his mother's friends at the vigil, he says that he briefly "had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge" him (10). In the second chapter, when talking with Marie, he says, "I felt like telling her it wasn't my fault, but I stopped myself because I remembered that I'd already said that to my boss. It didn't mean anything. Besides, you always feel a little guilty."
Clearly, Meursault couldn't have had any role in his mother's death since she was in a home, which he chose to put her in because he couldn't take care of her and the two didn't get along when they lived together. His reasoning is fairly rational, so why does he feel the dire need to tell others that he isn't to blame? It seems like he struggles to maintain his existentialist attitude that 'life is meaningless' when he consistently gets the message from others - Céleste, Thomas Pérez, Marie Cardona - that he should be grieving for his loss. By viewing his relationship with his mother as a mundane aspect of his world, he has to later confront the implications of that viewpoint after her death.
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