Anselmo 1

Brittany Anselmo

Ryan Gallagher

English 12 CP

14 Jan. 2011

The Stranger Analysis Paper

In the book, the narrator and protagonist Meursault, takes what he has for granted. He has

everything but doesn’t really care for it, he’s ignorant to things in his life. By being ignorant he is

unaware of how to really live life. He lives it emotionless, almost with no real meaning.

Meursault was given many chances to care about people but he chose not to care.

When Meursault ends up in jail everything is taken away from him and he then realizes

that he took things for granted, and starts to show some kind of emotion for things he never cared

about.Albert Camus, in the story The Stranger over all was showing how people can be ignorant

towards life, and how people are given options at one time or another and they sometimes don’t

bother with them, but when they need those options there not there anymore. Humans sometimes

are blind; they’re not aware of what is right in front of their face. And it takes something bad to

happen for people to finally see what something really is. Albert Camus writes this book in

Algeria, and under that time it was under the French’s rule. In the new city, the French rejected

the Arab architecture of the Casbah for French bourgeois classicism, while the residents of the

wealthier suburbs opted for imitations of Turkish gardens (jinan) architecture (Sivers,Par.5) The

French took away the right for them to live the way they did and it wasn’t till Algerians fought
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for their independence and when the France's President Charles de Gaulle grew weary of the

political divisions the war was creating in France, and Algeria achieved its independence.(Sivers,

Par.7) Their freedom was taken for granted until it was taken away from them, and then had to

fight for it back.

In the passage when Monsieur Meursault is having a conversation with Marie, Marie had

asked Meursault if he would marry her and he gave her the expression of not caring if they did

or not, it didn’t really matter to him. In The Stranger, Albert Camus shows that Meursault has

no feelings towards anything and is ignorant to the feelings anyone shares with him, by showing

this he also shows how this effects the relationships Meursault has with people. This is all shown

by the diction Camus uses. When humans are blind towards their partners feelings its like being

in a relationship with ones self. If that is the case then there really isn’t a point at all its more like

a waste of time. Albert Camus says that Meursault is a man so innocent, honest, and unreflected

about his own life that he fails to recognize the consequences of his behavior. (Ramsland, 13)

Him being this way shows maybe that he’s not this way by choice, its just who is he nothing

more.

Most people dream about the day when they find that one special person that truly cares

for them, but it doesn’t seem the same for Meursault. “[Marie] wanted to know if [Meursault]

loved her. [He] answered the same way [he] had last time, that it didn't mean anything but [he]

probably didn't love her." (Camus, 41) Monsieur Meursault hangs out with Marie as much as he

can, they're always at the beach together, and he's showing affection towards her. Looking in on

that relationship it looks as though he wants to be with her, and he to does care for her like she

does for him. Marie was letting Meursault know she cared about him and he doesn’t give it back

in return. He's showing this attitude towards her like he doesn’t really care. The reader can see
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this when Meursault so bluntly says "it didn't mean anything but [he] probably didn't love her."

(Camus, 41)

A little more into the passage, Marie asks Meursault if he would marry another girl if had

asked and he said "sure". (Camus, 42) By that one word he is showing he could care less if

Marie wants to get married or not. Asking someone to get married is a big deal. Meursault just

blows if off like its nothing. He’s being really ignorant, people can’t just marry someone and just

do it because they have a what ever feeling about the situation.

Marie just expressed to Meursault her feelings and he “didnt say anything. because [he]

didn’t have anything to add, so she took [his] are with a smile and she wanted to marry [him]”.

(Camus 42) In a relationship both people need to show they care and love another, but they also

need to be able to talk. Meursault and Marie's relationship is like a one person thing. She's giving

and expressing her feelings and Meursault has nothing to add or say. He can't be in a relationship

and act that way. He shouldn't be in one if he doesn't know how to act.

Meursault puts up and act. He doesn't care about anything; he has no emotions towards

anything. When acting like this he's going to ruin everything with the people he has a

relationship with. In order to be able to talk to people he needs to express how he feels and be

able to listen and give feedback to what others say. When doing this “he fails to recognize the

consequences of his behavior.” (Ramsland, 13) Since Meursault is unaware of this problem the

chance for him to change it, isn’t there. Humans can’t change things about themselves if they

don’t even recognize the problem.

In the passage on page 117 to 118 in part two, Meursault it’s being preached about god

and feels if he’s guilty then he’s guilty. He refers to his cell in this passage as well, which

symbolizes his trial. Albert Camus is trying to show the reader that when a person’s mind is set
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to something, it stays set to that one thing. Camus is also saying that when humans have

something to say then they should just say it.

The chaplain was trying to convince Meursault that yeah he might be sentence but he

should have faith in god, so he could receive forgiveness. Meursault was asked “how [he would]

face [the] terrifying ordeal.” (Camus, 117) Meursault would “face it exactly as [he is] now.”

(Camus, 117) If a human is going to die…should it really matter when they do? Meursault does

not think it does. Chaplain asks Meursault if “[he has any] hope at all? And [does he] really live

with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?” (Camus, 117) and he

answered “yes.” (Camus, 117) Meursault honestly doesn’t believe in all the religious things the

chaplain is preaching. Albert Camus had learned something from a German philosopher and it

was that having declared that God is dead in the modern soul and that Christian values shield us

from our true selves, Nietzsche proclaimed that an Ubermensch would overturn those values and

create new ones based on the will to power (Ramsland). The chaplain can’t change Meursault’s

mind. Once humans believe something. It’s what they believe.

Throughout Meursault’s court case he was kind of forced to believe that he didn’t care

about his mom because he didn’t cry at her funeral, he was forced to believe that he was guilty in

the way they had decided, he was forced to believe that he didn’t have a say when it came to his

life, and that he didn’t have a soul. While being forced to believe all this, he eventually did. The

minute Meursault showed any type of emotion towards something it was shut down before really

ever being heard.

In the passage on page 118, Meursault says how the jail cell didn’t have many options.

The jail cell symbolizes the court room, in both places there wasn’t really an option Meursault

had over the two. Obviously there isn’t going to be a lot of room in the jail cell, but in the court
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room Meursault didn’t have a say in anything, no options. He was said to be guilty and there was

no if, ands, or buts about it. It’s a little ironic how he goes from the jail to court, back to jail and

court again. Both places he doesn’t have really have a say. He’s almost being trapped in this

world and there isn’t a way out until he is gone.

In general the author is showing the reader how Meursault didn’t have much options, and

we he did when it come down to god, and not willing to believe. Meursault has the choice to not

believe in all the faith talk that the chaplain is trying to put in his head, but he should have been

given the chance to stick up for himself in court when he felt like he wanted to say something.

All in all, Albert Camus, shows the reader Meursault's ways in the book "The Strangers".

He shows us how Meursault goes from this emotionless human being to someone that soon

realizes he for once wants to have say in his life. Meursault knows why he does things the way

he does so no person can actually really telling he doesn't care about anything because they can't

see inside his head.

Annotated Bibliography for Albert Camus’ The Stranger

Donnie, John. “The Sun Rising” Poetry Out Loud. 10 Dec. 2010

Summary:
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This is a poem, by John Donnie, called “The Sun Rising”. John Donnie is talking about the sun

and referring it to things in his life.

Important Quotations:

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She's all states, and all princes, I,

Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus.
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
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Insight to The Stranger

This poem refers back to The Stranger in many ways. In the book Meursault refers to the sun all

the time. It’s either bothering him, “The sun had been the same as it had been the day I’d buried

Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under

the skin. It was the burning, which I couldn’t stand anymore, that made me movie forward. I

knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn’t get the sun off me by stepping forward. (Camus’ 58-59)

In The Stranger, the sun was always bothering Meursalt. The sun was a main symbol in the book

just like in the poem.

"existentialism." Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Springfield, MA: Merriam-

Webster, 1995. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Dec. 2010.

Summary:

Basically this piece of writing is talking about the meaning of existentialism.

Important Quotations:

existentialism [ˌek-si-ˈsten-chə-ˌliz-əm, ˌeg-zi-] Etymology: German Existentialismus, a

derivative of existentiell grounded in existence, existential

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A family of philosophies devoted to an interpretation of human existence in the world that

stresses its concreteness and its problematic character.

Existentialism is largely a coherent development within traditional philosophy. It rejects

traditional attempts to ground human knowledge in the external world, however. According to

existentialists, human beings are not solely or even primarily knowers; they also care, desire,

manipulate, and, above all, choose and act. Second, the self, or ego, required by some if not all

traditional epistemological doctrines, is not a fundamental entity but rather emerges from

experience .

It is an important tenet of existentialism that the individual is not a detached observer of the

world, but “in the world.” A person “exists” in a special sense in which entities like stones and

trees do not; a human being is “open” to the world and to objects in it. Further, humans, unlike

other entities, make themselves what they are by choices, choices of ways of life (Kierkegaard)

or of particular actions (Sartre).

Existentialism inspired a large body of imaginative literature, such as that of Sartre, Albert

Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir. Existentialist writers are characterized by their concern with

“being,” which contrasts not only with knowing but also with abstract concepts, which cannot

fully capture what is individual and specific. The existentialist movement also provided a means

of articulating and interpreting these same themes as discerned in works of literature from all

periods.
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Insight to The Stranger:

This is important because its who Albert Camus’ writes in the stranger. When reading, the reader

has to try and figure Meursalt out them selves. It’s like a question game, why is he doing this?

This is a technique that if you understood would help the reader understand why the author is

doing what he is and what he means when he says a certain thing.

Rosello, Mireille. "Representing illegal immigrants in France: from clandestins to l'affaire des

sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard." Journal of European Studies 28.1-2 (1998): 137+. Gale World

History In Context. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.

Summary:

In this journal entry, Mireille Rosello, is about immigrants in France.

Important Quotations:

And this occurs at a delicate moment when, since the introduction of the Pasqua laws in 1993,

the status of many immigrants has changed, the proliferation of legal texts turning some

situations into inextricable nightmares, creating administrative monsters such as the

inexpulsable-irregularisable who can neither be deported nor given resident's status.

I have concentrated on the way in which French TV has treated the 'illegal immigrant' as a

relevant, recognizable and favourite object of representation

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And what I want to argue is that they have one feature in common: each time, illegal

immigration is not defined, but it is associated with other concepts or elements, for example

clandestinity and invisibility, clandestinity and papers, or clandestinity and the police, and

clandestinity and race. Images do not try to provide a definition of illegality that one could put

into words.

The stereotypical immigrant was the Arab and the issue of integration was illustrated by pictures

of Beurs. Sociologists, political leaders, reporters and cultural critics continue to place much

emphasis on the specific situation of Maghrebi populations in France. On the one hand, a

minority Beur culture has emerged, and on the other hand, more and more violently racist

reactions continue to exploit every incident involving Arabs.(7) Meanwhile, a gradual

displacement may be taking place that is slowly constructing people from Mali or Mauritania or

Senegal as the latest wave of (illegal) immigrants.

At first, ostensibly, that type of portrayal is generous. In the case of the Moroccan witness, the

desire is to give illegal immigrants a voice while protecting them from the risk of visibility.

Insight to The Stranger

Meursalt was an immigrant in the book. So this piece can relate to how immigrants where

treated. In the book it was the time when Algeria was under France’s rule. So in this article it

talks about how France viewed their immigrants. This relates because it can give you an insight

on how immigrants where back then, so it could help out with understanding who Meursalt really

was and why he acted the way he did. Meursalt showed no emotions at all maybe this was
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because when he first went there he was treated poorly so he didn’t have the confidence to really

show who he was anymore. No one really knows but while reading this it could possibly open

your mind a little.

Sivers, Peter Von. "Algiers." Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Ed.

Philip Mattar. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 139-140. Gale

World History In Context. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.

Summary:

From this encyclopedia reading, you get the main gist of what was happening in Algeria when

France had control over it.

Important Quotations:

In the new city, the French rejected the Arab architecture of the Casbah for French bourgeois

classicism, while the residents of the wealthier suburbs opted for imitations of Turkish gardens

(jinan) architecture (Par.5)

In 1954, overwhelming agrarian inequality and misery triggered the Algerian War of

Independence. The war hastened the rural exodus, and around 1956, for the first time, more

Muslims than Europeans lived in Algiers. In 1957, the war extended to the city, where it was

fought briefly in the Casbah's maze of cul-de-sacs. In 1962, France's President Charles de Gaulle
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grew weary of the political divisions the war was creating in France, and Algeria achieved its

independence. Furious settlers scorched parts of downtown Algiers before leaving the city en

masse (311,000 left between 1960 and 1962) (Par.7)

Insight into The Stranger:

From this reading, you get an idea about how things where in Algeria. Algeria is where the book

The Strangers takes place. From reading this you can kind of get an idea how things where in

Algeria, to help getting a better understanding of the setting of the book. This is important

because it might be able to help you understand why things are they way they are, and why

things are done the way they are.

"Urban forms and colonial confrontations: Algiers under French rule." Urban History Review

26.1 (1997): 59-60. Gale World History In Context. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.

Summary:

In this reading it talks about the French. It tells you about who the French ruled and why they

ruled them.

Important Quotation:

In 1830, the French found Algiers, a jewel on the Mediterranean, shaped by Islamic culture, with

its short crooked streets dominated by males and its roofs and interior spaces controlled by

women. French engineers immediately acted for military reasons (to defend the colony from

seaborne attack rather than from the indigenous population) to open up space for the rapid
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deployment of troops. Boulevards and the Place du Gouvernement (a place to muster troops)

were carved out of shops and mosques: "The abrupt brutality of the first interventions caused an

immediate controversy, making the city and its architecture prime actors as contested terrains in

the colonial confrontation" (p. 27). The result was the division of Algiers into the high city, the

Arab-dominated Casbah, and the lower Marine Quarter, dominated by the Europeans. (Par. 2)

Beginning with Napoleon III, and continuing through the period of French rule, a policy of

preserving native forms alongside new towns for the setters (colons) became the rule, as the lure

of the Casbah coexisted with the modern, Marine Quarter (Par.3)

The story told is one of sometimes noble intentions running into the reality of anti-colonial

feelings in which French manipulation of the urban scene and housing were ultimately counter-

productive and left the post-colonial Algerian government with scarred, urban wastelands.

Although the book deals with major military, political, economic and social themes, the focus is

on urban history.(Par. 5)

Insight into The Stranger:

At the time the French had ruled over Algeria. The book The Stranger takes place in Algeria

during the French rule. Knowing the story about how the French ruled Algeria gives you a little

extra background information to have while reading. This is important because it will help you

getting a better understanding of how the book plays out, and why things happen the way the do.
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Ramsland, Katherine."Visions of the Absurd."Biblio. (Vol. 4). . 1 (Jan. 1999): p18. Literature

Resource Center. Gale.Malden High School.16 Dec. 2010.http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?

p=LitRC&u=mlin_b_maldenhs

Summary:

This is a biblio about Albert Camus and his writing.

Important Quotations:

Born on 7 November 1913 in French Algeria, a land on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa,

Albert was only eight months old when his father was killed in World War I's Battle of the

Marne. Albert and his older brother, Lucien, were raised in poverty by their disciplinarian

grandmother, Madame Sintes, and their mother, Catherine Helene, who was illiterate and nearly

deaf. She worked as a cleaning woman and shared a bedroom with her sons in the cramped

apartment. Her silent but steady figure left a deep impression on Albert that showed up in several

characters in

later works, most notably Madame Rieux from La Peste (1947; The Plague) and Jacques

Cormery's mother in Le Premier homme (1994; The First Man).

Although Albert's grandmother wanted him to leave school to earn money for the family, a

teacher, Louis Germain, spotted the boy's talent and insisted that he be allowed to continue his
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education. Madame Sintes relented, and with the help of scholarships Albert studied philosophy

and literature in high school and at the University of Algiers. His favorite authors included

Kafka, Gide, Faulkner, Proust, and Dostoevsky. He also loved Pascal, but the nineteenth-century

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had an even more profound influence.

Having declared that God is dead in the modern soul and that Christian values shield us from our

true selves, Nietzsche proclaimed that an Ubermensch would overturn those values and create

new ones based on the will to power. Without such a person to renew our society, we're doomed

to go through phases of soul-deadening nihilism until we lose spiritual momentum. This way of

life, Nietzsche predicted, which shows itself in fanaticism, debauchery, and addiction, will signal

our annihilation -- the advent of the "last man." Camus saw an important truth in these ideas.

Germany set up occupation in Paris not long after Camus arrived. He contemplated escape but

delayed when Francine Faure, the Algerian woman to whom he felt attached at the time, joined

him there. Despite his antipathy toward the institution of marriage, he agreed to wed. Shortly

thereafter, he

lost his job, and he and Francine returned to North Africa. Eventually they had twins, a son, Jean,

and a daughter, Catherine.

The Stranger came out before The Myth of Sisyphus, though both were published in 1942. The

Stranger portrays the antihero Meursault, a man so innocent, honest, and unreflective about his

own life that he fails to recognize the consequences of his behavior. He also is utterly detached,
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exemplifying the state of remaining a stranger to oneself, one's friends, and one's own world:

(Par. 13)