Who is this guy? Blog Post

Judging by Meursault's detached attitude towards life, my first impression of him was of an inconsiderate and careless loner. He seems to be unengaged or doesn't find much importance in all that he does. He shows much indifference towards his mother's death although it can be argued that that's the way he copes with loss. He also doesn't project much interest in his "love" life. He sleeps with Marie and when she asks him if he loved her, he said he didn't. When she asks him if he would marry her, he said marriage didn't matter and that if she wanted to marry him then they would do it. He doesn't seem to care at all about the stuff people would normally find importance in. Another example was when he witnesses his neighbor abusing his dog. When asked if he thought that was terrible, he replied with a simple no. When his other neighbor asked for his opinion on whether he should beat up his girlfriend for suspected cheating, Meursault said go ahead and even agrees to help him write the letter that lures her in and pretend to act as a witness to her suspected infedelity.

He seems to just go with the flow, not caring about what happens or about any consequences. He never seems to have a set schedule or anything planned, doing what he feels like. His job is probably the only responsible aspect in his life, but even then, we consistently hear him saying "It's not my fault." He seems to take on Caterine's philosophy where he feels life is meaningless. Maybe it can be argued that it's not that he doesn't care about life, but that he accepts it more for what it is. He accepts the idea that death is natural and that's probably why it seemed like it was so easy for him to let his mother go.

Camus created this character porbably because very little of us can actually relate to him. Most writers would invent characters that readers can understand but in this case, Camus wants to push our thinking, have us step into his shoes and look at the world through this character's emotionless eyes. People tend to find objects in their life that they deem valuable for whatever the reason may be. But the point is that these objects are given values through humans; they aren't predetermined values. Meursault's objective view of life in this case percieves all objects as valueless.

As we criticize Meursault for being such a compassionless person, maybe we ought to take a step back and see things from his perspective. Maybe we are the ones who need to reevaluate our lives because maybe the bad thing here isn't being Life's pushover, but instead is going against the natural way of things, setting schedules for free times (reference to the woman he saw at the restaurant), putting value in something that originally didn't, and creating meaning in a meaningless world. (I just contradicted my whole Manifesto.)