"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday" (1).
In the first half of Part 1 of The Stranger, we meet the very strange Meursault, who seems to have very little emotion. He has no filter on what he says, so the reader gets to enjoy the stream of consciousness of a psychologically detached adult. I found the first lines to be the strangest moment because I was able to pick up on the personality of the protagonist instantly. Whereas in other books, the reader does not fully get the picture of the character until later on in the book. It seemed so strange that he did not know when his mother died or that he did not care. In my world, a death is a huge deal. It is something tragic and memorable, an event that is burned into my memory.
"It occurred to me that anyway on more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed" (24). The fact that a person can do this just days after the lass of a loved one is amazing, yet very very strange.
I completely agree with what you are saying about getting to know the protagonist right away. I didn't think about it while I was reading, but knowing the personality of the protagonist within the first few pages isn't very common. The personality of the protagonist shows that he doesn't take the death of his mother very seriously which left me uneasy because to most people, death is taken very seriously.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good point! I agree that it was cool to get to know the main character within only the first few lines. I wonder if, going forward, he actually will be over his mother's death, or if we'll realize that, although he pretends not to think of it much, it's actually very difficult for him.
ReplyDelete