I think we've all heard Meursault say it over and over again, "the sun made me do it!" Unless I read the wrong book, I'm pretty sure that the sun didn't physically force Meursault to kill an Arab, so what is the point of the sun anyways? After a close encounter with the Arabs the first time around, Meursault walked along the beach by himself, when a black dot caught the corner of his eye: "I hadn't stopped watching the Arab"..."all I had to do was turn around and that would be the end of it. But the whole beach, throbbing in the sun, was pressing on my back" (Camus 58).
It was as simple as walking away, and yet Meursault chose to stay at the beach.
The pressing on Meursault's back was almost like his conscious is saying he had left something behind. After Meursault stayed he said that it looked as if the Arab was laughing. "The sun was starting to burn my cheeks, and I could feel drops of sweat gathering in my eyebrows" (99).Through Camus' diction, we can see that Meursault is getting aggravated with the Arab. Meursault felt a rush of humiliation rush over his body, and his cheeks began to blush, a common human emotion. Although we all know Meursault denies to feel human emotion, Meursault's human tendencies are parallel to Camus' description of the sun.
At the end of the Novel, prior to Meursault's death, Meursault says, "I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself --so like a brother, really --." Meursault's reference to his close relationship to the earth almost makes me think of the solar system, comparing Meursault's role (the sun) to his surroundings (the earth). Although Meursault feels different from the earth for nearly the whole book, it isn't until moments before his death that he is not a living being of society, but a part of nature, and simply subject to his surroundings, and should be treated as such.
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