While reading The Stranger, I cannot help but notice how incredible the descriptions of everything are. The one description that really stuck out to me was Merusault's extremely detailed description of the prison and his life in prison. The way that he first describes the hardships he has had to go through first, but then describes how he overcame it, really proves his point that anyone can adapt to anything.
I also think that Meursault's idea of memories is very interesting. I don't think that a person realizes how many memories they really have until that is the only thing they are left with. Meursault proves this. He states that he would remember everything. He would go through entire rooms in his house and think about every little nook and crannie that was there, and he also had a memory for every little thing he remembered in a room. A person collects a lot of memories in just one day. Camus makes the point that memories help people through jail, and that even if a person was born the day before they went to jail, they would have enough memories to help pass the time.
Whenever I heard about jail, I always thought about how terribly boring it must be, and though Camus does not make jail sound appealing, he shows how people get through it. People learn to adapt to any situation they are in, no matter how different it may be from what they are used to. People use their memories to pass the time.
I really enjoyed reading about how Meursault managed to pass time in prison, too. The way he was able to eventually remember even the tiniest details of his room makes me wish that I could remember everything in that crazy amount of detail. It's a shame that it took being confined to a tiny cell to allow Meursault to access those deep parts of his memory. Though it must've been cool to go through his room inside his head, going to prison is definitely not worth achieving that level of internal exploration.
ReplyDelete