It is an incontrovertible fact that there will always be more prisoners outside the walls of the gaols of the world than within the confines of such institutions. As W,H.Auden sang in an unusual elegy on the death of W.B. Yeats, each of us âin the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedomâ (197). Meursault, the protagonist of Albert Camusâ LâEtranger (the title having been translated both as The Stranger and The Outsider) always eludes the grip of the fetters and chains of human societyâwhether he is merely in the âcell of himselfâ or in a prison cell. Therefore, in an ultimate and essential sense, he is always free because he can never be imprisoned by the conventions that bind the rest of humanity to their cells of themselves, to each other, to their sometimes ludicrous codes of conduct and behavior, and to their frequently obviously asinine laws and systems of justice. In fact, before he is executed, he succeeds in proving, to the satisfaction of the reader at least, the truth of the assertion that that the law is an ass.
The most striking thing about Meursault is his absolute and unshakable honesty. It is almost as if he does not understand the need for dishonesty in a world full of people who are convinced that dishonesty is the best policy. Another admirable quality of Mersault is his refusal to pass judgment on other human beings, for whatever reason. The Biblical promise: âJudge not and ye shall not be judgedâ may not have been kept to Mersaultâs advantage while he was aliveâhe was judged by one and all, and not merely by the judicial functionary assigned to try the case of this particularly âtryingâ defendant who did not even try to defend himself, as any defendant is duty bound to do, by the rules of human society. However, three or four generations of readers have perhaps overturned the judgment of that court in their hearts, and paid Meursault the tribute he, without any doubt, deserves, of judgment according to the principles and practices upheld by him and not by the shopworn moth-eaten rules, regulations and traditions of the world.
The very beginning of the novel reflects Meursaultâs individuality:
MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I canât be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.
What man is this, the reader wonders, who seems so unsure about the date of his motherâs death? The plain fact of it is that most men would find themselves similarly disoriented in such a situation, only they wouldnât go on talking about it. It cannot, surely, be all that difficult to empathize with the Meursault who feels that âFor the present, itâs almost as if Mother werenât really dead. The funeral will bring it home to me, put an official seal on it, so to speak….. This is surely a sentiment that many men and women in the same situation would have sharedâa sense of disbelief. Meursault only makes the mistake of appearing to use understatement when hyperbole is the way of the world, of sounding as if the situation was not of earthshaking importance to him, and of being open and frank in recording such thoughts and in the same disarming manner that others might use to speak of less prickly matters than a sonâs muted reaction to the news of his motherâs death.
In somewhat the same tone, Meursault speaks of his reasons for leaving his mother in the Home for the Aged and explains why he did not visit her as frequently as society would have expected of a dutiful but penurious son:
When we lived together, Mother was always watching me, but we hardly ever talked. During her first few weeks at the Home she used to cry a good deal. But that was only because she hadnât settled down. After a month or two sheâd have cried if sheâd been told to leave the Home. Because this, too, would have been a wrench. That was why, during the last year, I seldom went to see her. Also, it would have meant losing my Sundayânot to mention the trouble of going to the bus, getting my ticket, and spending two hours on the journey each way. (6)
A man of the world would have stopped himself from uttering that last sentenceâabout the bother of missing Sunday, of getting into the bus, paying for his ticket, and wasting his time. Small wonder, then, that no one has ever called Monsieur Mersault a man of the world! In fact, he is anything but a man of the worldâa veritable exile on earth in the midst of the mass of run of the mill humanity.
There are people who patently misunderstand Meursault, sometimes to his advantage, as in the case of the keeper of the mortuary who really would like to know why Meursault does not wish to see his motherâs face for a last time, who finally, âsaid gently, âI understand.â â(8). However gentle the tone, one could safely assert that the keeper could have understood none of Meursaultâs real motives, for even Meursault did not know them. When he tells the keeper, âWell, really I couldnât say,â (8), there can be no doubt that that is gospel truth. In fact, that statement is Mersaultâs true gospel in a nutshell. It is also perhaps rather more attractive than the obstinate finality that most evangelists use to cloak their uncertainties and doubts.
At the funeral, when the earth patters on his motherâs coffin, Meursaultâs thoughts are about sleeping for twelve hours at a stretch. A week later, after meeting with Maria at the beach, Meursault reflects to himself, âIt occurred to me that somehow Iâd got through another Sunday, that Mother now was buried, and tomorrow Iâd be going back to work as usual. Really, nothing in my life had changedâ (25). However, life soon changes after the encounter with the Arabs and the glint of a knife in the sun impels a volley of shots from a revolver that he only coincidentally happened to hold in his hand. The first bullet had probably done its work, but Meurasult, for no intelligible reason, fires four more bullets into the inert body, âAnd each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoingâ (60).
After that fateful event, Meursault is no longer freeâthe law takes him into its hands and finds that it does not know what to make of its strange catch. Meursault notices that âthe examining magistrateâŠeyed me with distinct curiosityâ (61). His own attorney is âgreatly perturbedâ when told as an âafterthoughtâ by his client (referring to the death of his mother) that âall normal people⊠had more or less desired the death of those they loved, at some time or anotherâ(63). Whatever be the advances that the world has made in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, even a professional man of the law does not know what to make of a human being who insists on being quite uneconomical and unequivocal with the truth.
After six months of confinement in prison, Meursault comments on the humdrum nature of life(perhaps not all that different from the life unconfined):
When, one morning, the jailer informed me Iâd now been six months in jail, I believed himâbut the words conveyed nothing to my mind. To me it seemed like one and the same day that had been going on since Iâd been in my cell, and that Iâd been doing the same thing all the time. (78).
He also surprises himself with the realization that he has fallen into the habit of talking to himself. That is perhaps one way to beat the pain of solitary confinementâbut Meursault does not seem to be aware of any such pain.
Meursault realizes too how he appears to other people when he listens to the speeches of the counsel on both sides and wonders at how they seem to agree on certain key points:
Really there wasnât any very great difference between the two speeches. Counsel for the defense raised his arms to heaven and pleaded guilty, but with extenuating circumstances. The Prosecutor made similar gestures; he agreed that I was guilty, but denied extenuating circumstances. (96).
This makes him wish that he could present his case to the court, but that is not seen as a particularly bright idea: âIn fact, there seemed to be a conspiracy to exclude me from the proceedings; I wasnât to have any say and my fate was to be decided out of handâ (96). Meursault might perhaps have felt that this was equally true of the life of any human being on this planetâwhat say is he allowed to have in deciding his own fate? Finally the sentence is passed and Meursault notes that âthe presiding judge had already started pronouncing a rigmarole to the effect that âin the name of the French peopleâ I was to be decapitated in some public placeâ (104). Everyone suddenly starts to treat him with an unaccustomed gentleness.
The chaplain tries to convert him to view with some desire the pie in the sky till Meursault finally loses his patience and makes a statement of his philosophy of life:
Every man alive was privileged; there was only one class of men, the privileged class. All alike would be condemned to die one day; his turn, too, would come like the othersâ. And what difference could it make if, after being charged with murder, he were executed because he didnât weep at his motherâs funeral, since it all came to the same thing in the end. (118).
The chaplain leaves the cell âwith tears in his eyesâ (119) and Meursault calms down. He gains his final realization into the nature of deathâboth the death of his mother and his own death to come:
With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that Iâd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration. (119-20).
In other words, he has grown enough to be able to put into words what he had really known all alongâabout the âbenign indifference of the universeâ and about the thrill with which he should welcome the âhowls of execrationâ of the world. This world is not his world, he is finally âready to start life allover againâ if required. What better spirit than this to end oneâs life? And who better qualified to voice this than Mersault the free, Mersault the free man who has jumped the cell of himself and realized that he âhad been happyâ and âwas happy still.â To quote Conor Cruise OâBrien, it is âthe integrity of the artistâ that âjoins Mersault to his creatorâ (22). One might be tempted to add that it is this integrity that joins him to the reader too. For, as Camus says in âThe Myth of Sisyphusâ, âin a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a strangerâ(13). Mersault has put out the illusionary lights of our world, and we can no longer see our place in it.
Works Cited
Auden, W.H. âIn Memory of W.B. Yeats.â Collected Poems. London, Faber, 1976.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage, 1946.
âThe Myth of Sisyphus.â The Myth of Sisyphus. Trans. Justin OâBrien. London: Penguin, 1980.
OâBrien, Conor Cruise. Camus. Fontana Modern Masters Series. Glasgow: Collins, 1977.