The Letter of Punishment

Though I personally have never been a cheater or a cheatee in a romantic relationship, I imagine that the most common form of revenge is not found in the lines of a letter. Let alone a letter written by neither party involved. It can be inferred Meursault is hardly ever overcome with emotion and does not allow life to affect him very much at all. He is a numb being, living simply in a complex world.

Let's start at the beginning of this interesting relationship Meursault shares with Raymond, his neighbor who is also a warehouse guard. Raymond had a girlfriend. Actually, she was his mistress. She cheated on him, he found out. He's since been beating her physically but now he wishes to concoct a way to cause her more pain psychologically. Raymond thinks the best way to do this is to write a letter to the woman explaining how great she had it with him and how sorry her life will be without him. He - being a coward and all - can't write the letter himself, so he imposes upon his neighbor and friend of about three minutes to do it: "But Raymond told me he didn't think he could write the type of letter it would take and that he'd thought of asking me to write it for him. Since I didn't say anything, he asked if I'd mind doing it right then and I said no" (Camus 32). So, without missing a beat Meursault agrees to pen a letter intended to inflict serious amounts of emotional turmoil on a woman he's never met written from the point of view of a man who openly divulged into his assault-ridden relationship with said woman within the first minutes of their first ever interaction. To put in minimally, this encounter was not a conventional one, however it is one that no reader is likely to forget. We are drawn in by the strangeness and indifference that is the life of Meursault. The sheer fact that we find ourselves almost completely unbound to this character allows us to freely live in the space the author has created for us for the time being.