Meursault´s Trial: The Right to Judge

For me, Meursault´s murder trial was incredibly disturbing, especially considering the context behind it, as well as my knowledge of Meursault as a person. Despite the trial allegedly being about the murder he committed at the end of Part 1, the prosecutor takes notable focus to all of the aspects of Meursault´s life up to the murder. In short, Meursault is judged by the jury more as character than as a criminal.

Despite Meursault being fundamentally amoral, both the prosecutor and defendant manipulate information about his life to make him appear evil or good, respectively. To further emphasize this, I found it particularly interesting that there is no mention of any of the people connected to the murdered Arab were brought up as witnesses by either side, with all of the witnesses specifically being characters introduced to the readers by Meursault. In turn, the actual crime that Meursault committed becomes almost irrelevant to the trial, with all of the evidence and conclusions from both lawyers being drawn by farfetched correlations between Meursault´s past actions. However, the scariest part of the entire trial is that Meursault cannot explain himself ideally to the courtroom because he believes there is no favorable way for his life to be presented tot he unexperienced eye (i.e. anybody but the reader). He´s been put into a situatuion in which he feels like he can´t win or lose, because he cannot portray himself in a way that would allow for either result. This made me wonder - what right does the court have to judge Meursault as a moral or immoral person when he is truly neither? What is the symbolism of Meursault being judged for his past actions near the climax of the story?