Shared Cigarette

In the second part of Camus' The Stranger, the subject of Maman's funeral plays a substantial role in determining the outcome of Mersault's trial. The prosecutor becomes emboldened with each testimony that Mersault did not cry, and the jury more convinced that Mersault is guilty of murder without remorse. One peculiar moment stands out among these testimonies; the caretaker's statement that he took a cigarette offered to him by Mersault. In the grand scheme of a murder trial, a single cigarette seems minute and unimportant. Yet, it takes up nearly a page's worth of discussion.

What then, is the significance of the cigarette? Perhaps the meaning lies not in the object itself, but in the fact that it was offered. If the prosecutor's point was that Mersault showed selfishness and a lack of compassion by refusing to cry, he was counteracted by Mersault's selfless act of sharing a cigarette. Mersault was not, could not be, as heartless as the prosecutor intended him to be if he was willing to share.

 Human emotion, after all, does not exist on an all or nothing spectrum. While certain painful emotions such as grief and remorse may be bottled up and suppressed, compassion easily works it way out into the world. It is extremely hard work to remain truly emotionless, which is good news for Mersault - as his guilt lay on the fact that he seemed detached from his emotions, reducing him to an almost sub-human killing machine.

Perhaps even more significant, however, is the fact that the caretaker smoked the cigarette. In the midst of a funeral for a woman he had cared for at the end of her life, he allowed himself the minimal pleasure of a smoke. The prosecutor had called for Mersaults guilt for such the same action, saying grief ought to have overridden any small desires (such as those for a smoke or a coffee) and the fact that they did not suggested that Mersault had no grief.

However, the caretaker is a far more sympathetic character. He was not assumed to be emotionless, yet he also found pleasure in the midst of a grievious moment. He used the smoke to find a moment of happiness, of normalcy, within a trying and sad affair. Emotions coexist, and he has proved it. One can be a little happy while very sad, or very happy yet slightly melancholy. Mersault, therefore, could just as well be the same. His engaging in routine pleasures during his mother's funeral do not exemplify him as inhuman, rather as the most normal human there is - one who can experience a wide range of emotions at once, attempting to counteract negative ones with positive ones, however small.

The anecdote of the cigarette at Mersault's trial was significant on many accounts. It proved that Mersault could experience emotion and more than that, could experience multiple emotions at once. It placed Mersault and the caretaker at the same level of emotional guilt - whether that be great or nonexistent is up to interpretation. It expressed the flexibility of the emotional spectrum and the grey area between grief and happiness.