Weird? Or just fitting in?

It's fair to say that most readers can't very much relate to Mersault. In much of the discussion I've heard around this book and Mersault's character, he is most commonly described as "weird". There is no denying that, if you are comparing Mersault to yourself or those living in the 21st century around you, he is pretty strange. However, if you read following Nabokov’s rules and fully immerse yourself into the world of The Stranger and leave behind the real world, you may question if Mersault is really all that strange.

In discussion, he is widely criticized for the way he mourned the death of his mother. He refers to her funeral as an “excuse” to miss work, he doesn’t want to open the casket, instead of crying at the wake he falls asleep, and he uses the word “official” when describing how he hopes the death will feel after the funeral. Although I truly believe that it is no one’s place to criticize someone for the way they process a death, I think his behavior can be explained. He says that nothing has changed after the funeral, but that is because things had already changed for him. When Mersault sent his mother to the home, he moved all of his furniture into one room because the house felt too big for him. I think he said that the death would be/feel official after the funeral because, for him, his mother died when she moved out. If the book’s plot had started on that day, perhaps we would have seen a more noticeable grieving process.

Mersault is also criticized and described as weird in reader discussions for his relationship with Marie. The relationship seems pretty normal until she asks if he loves her and would like to marry her. Many people have expressed that they thought it was harsh of him to tell her he didn’t think he loved her, and weird that he said he would marry her anyways. But was his response really that much stranger than the question? Marie and Mersault have been hooking up for, like, three days and she’s already asking about love and marriage. It is a strange conversation, but I don’t think that Mersault has all the blame in that.

Mersault’s willingness to aid Raymond in his abuse is another red flag for most readers. To many, Mersault’s values stick out like a sore thumb in the midst of the upset apartment renters when they hear the screaming and crying. Everyone stands in the hallway, Marie voices how awful it is, and Mersault won’t call the cops because he doesn’t like police. There is no question that Mersault was condoning Raymond’s actions when he wrote the letter, but so were most people. The neighbors were satisfied when Raymond just got a warning and Marie jumped at the chance to go hang out with Raymond for a few days if it included a beach.

Mersault may be considered weird and morally stunted in comparison to the world we live in today, but to be a good reader you must stop comparing him to the world you live in and immerse yourself in the world where no police are called for a knife fight and domestic violence hardly turns a head. Obviously it is wrong to kill someone and obviously there is something very off about Mersault, but who is to say one of the other characters in the book would not have acted the same in that situation? Is Mersault really that much worse than the other characters in the book?