I think that Meursault's indifferent attitude shows how shallow he is as a person. Absolutely nothing that anyone says or does inspires emotion for him. During the incident when Raymond beats his girlfriend, three separate instances occurred where Raymond could have shown emotion, but he nonchalantly expressed indifference. "...I didn't say anything" , "I didn't expect anything", and "It didn't matter to me, but I didn't know what to say" are all expressions that Meursault used throughout the fight and shortly after (36-37). His lack of emotion or empathy is a clear example that he is a shallow person. Watching a man beat his wife and not having a reaction is certainly unacceptable in my opinion. Maria commented that it was terrible, and a simple agreement with that fact would at least given him some sort of emotional recognition, but he decided to stay silent.
For me, the worst of his puzzling character is when he begins to think about his mom. At the end of Chapter 4, he says, "For some reason I thought of Maman. But I had to get up early in the next morning. I wasn't hungry, and I went to bed without any dinner" (39). He almost allows himself to show emotion, yet right away he comes up with excuses to move on from the thought of his passed away mother. Contrary to custom, he never gave himself the time of day to reflect about his mother or to grieve. Without skipping a beat, he went back to his routine day that consisted of emotionless social interactions and essential needs of a person: eat, sleep, work.
Meursault's simple and passive character causes me to believe that he does not care for things in life and merely goes through the motions of his day without truly examining the interesting world around him. What could be the prose and cons of going through life without basic emotions?
I have to wonder if Meursault's passiveness is more a symptom of a more non-combative nature. It feels to me like throughout the story he tries to escape any situations that could lead to conflict between him and others, or even just conflicts inside himself. He gets defensive very easily as we've seen, and I think that is a sign that he wants to be able to escape conflicts inside of himself in regards to his own decisions (justifying his actions to himself) and then also to get whoever he's talking to to leave him alone. When he doesn't step in to help Raymond's girlfriend, that seems to be him attempting to enter conflict with his neighbor. As soon as he admits that the scenario is terrible as Maria comments, he enters conflict with himself as to why he doesn't do anything. When he pushes his mother from his mind, he's avoiding discomfort resulting from her residency in the home. He is trying to escape pain at all costs. When he doesn't skip a beat when getting back to work, he's avoiding conflict with his boss. The only contradiction I can really find to my hypothesis is the fact that he killed someone. Could it be because he wanted to end the conflict that he was wrapped up in as quickly as possible? Maybe. And to answer your question at the end as quickly as possible, without emotions, life would be a lot more efficient, but you'd miss out on most of the human experience. You'd be little more than a robot seeking pleasure and survival.
ReplyDelete-- Liam P