In Camus's masterful description of Mersault's emotions during his mother's funeral in The Stranger, it is clear that the ownership of grief is a universal issue. When someone dies, people tend to assume that they must assert their personal relationship with the decreased, forming almost a competition of who is in more pain. Everyone wants to own a piece of the grief. This is not only extremely unhealthy, but it also takes away from the celebration of the life of the person that passed. In Camus's depiction of Mersault, the grief of his mother's death for himself was not overwhelming, yet he had trouble 'sharing' it. As his mother's friends cry and grieve at her casket, Mersault finds them to be annoying. The prospect of someone else knowing his mother as he did, or perhaps even better than he did, is hurtful and problematic to Mersault. He, like most people, deal with these complex emotions by getting frustrated and internally reasserting his relationship with Maman by owning the grief.
This theme transcends beyond the novel. It is common that the time following a death is individuals sharing their own personal stories, showing how THEY were so close with the deceased in attempts to make other's experience feel smaller. Clearly, this is problematic. The idea that a death needs to be owned takes away immensely from deaths of friends, family, or, in Mersault's case, Maman. It is sad that what could be a shared, communal experience of love and bonding is overshadowed by competition. Perhaps in The Stranger, it is due to Mersault's lack of, or inability to, love that prevents him from forming community with fellow grievers. Either way, Maman's life was forgotten as Mersault struggled to ignore the cries of her friends and found himself overcome with annoyance with the individual ownership of grief.
This is a very great point. I agree that in times of mourning and despair, many people try to prove or show how sad they are, and they want everyone around them to have a pity party. I think this also really took away from celebrating the death of Mersault's mother, and the only person he wasn't really mad at was her his mother's older friend who was walking with them through the heat. He wasn't trying to show how sad he was, he was just trying to respect the dead, and I think that is what Mersault respects as a person, he is a man of basic principle, so basic he ignores most other things. However, when people follow those principles he really appreciates it.
ReplyDeleteRiley T ^^^
ReplyDeleteEleanor, this is really great because you highlight an inherently human reaction to death. People attempt to own part of the death to show others that they were connected to the deceased. The only thing I question is whether the incident with Mersault really is about showing his emotions. The way I read it, Mersault was strangely detached from the death of his mother, even to the point of carelessness. While it is unfair to assume that Mersault did not care at all about his mother, he certainly did not show any particular connection to her. He didn't even know how old she was. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeletePeople do grieve in different ways, however I would assert that Meursault does not understand grief in the same way that most people do. My reason for saying this is because he feels the need to explain to people that it isn't his fault his mother died. That their reactions to his explaining his mothers death would require a reminder that he isn't guilty. His deflection, the way I see it, is his inability to understand grief, at least in the commonly held sense. If he was grieving or at the least understood grief he would never have felt the need to explain his role in his mothers passing.
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