Meursault’s crime in Albert Camus’s The Stranger is of murdering a man. He murdered an Arab and was arrested by the police for his crime. Nevertheless, as the story progresses it becomes apparent that Meursault’s crime of murdering a man was insignificant to his detachment and indifference to life’s moral codes. Thus, Meursault was judged for both his actions and his nonchalant disposition.
Guilt or innocence of the crime was not the main concern of the magistrate in The Stranger. Contrarily, his foremost concern was Meursault’s social behavior. Meursault was not being tried as a man who had committed a crime. Instead, the magistrate showed more interest regarding the protagonist’s demeanor. Society’s judgment of the accused gains predominance in the book than his actual crime. In other words, how the society perceives the protagonist assumed precedence over his alleged crime.
In The Stranger, the protagonist is remarkably detached from life even though he is involved in all its activities. He is nonchalant and indifferent to others’ affairs. He even seemed unable to grieve when his mother died. The book opened with his casualness towards his mother’s death: “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.” (Camus 4). At his mother’s funeral, Meursault remains unmoved by his mother’s death.
He felt uncomfortable at the funeral when he realized that the manager and one of his mother’s friends from the old age home were judging him. Even Meursault’s romantic relations are marred with detachment. He remained dispassionate towards Marie despite the fact that he enjoyed her company. When Marie told him to marry her, he replied that he did not mind but when the former inquired if he loved her he said, “that her question meant nothing or next to nothing” (Camus 28).
The magistrate’s interest in Meursault’s character was evident as he said “what really interests me is – you!” (Camus 42) When Meursault was interrogated by the magistrate, the first question that the latter asked was related to the protagonist’s character and not about the crime: “He led off by remarking that I had the reputation of being a taciturn, rather self-centered person, and he’d like to know what I had to say to that” (42). The magistrate’s interrogation oscillated between whether Meursault loved his mother to whether he believed in God as these two facts seemed more important to the jurors than the details of the crime.
When Meursault told the magistrate that he was an atheist, the magistrate refused to accept it: “all men believe in God, even those who reject Him” (Camus 43). The magistrate is more intrigued with his blasé personality than the crime he had committed. Disbelieving in God was “unthinkable” for the magistrate but murder was not. Murder was a crime, but Meursault’s dispassionate, unattached way of looking at life was unacceptable. Thus, the examination turns into a moral inquiry of the protagonist’s personality instead of a murder trial.
The prosecutor accused Meursault of murdering his mother and “unfit” to live in “the community” (Camus 64). He was “morally guilty” of flouting the “basic principles” of society (64). Meursault was a social renegade. He was a deviant soul who did not believe in or adhere to the societal codes. This made him more undesirable than the fact that he had committed a murder. Meursault was found guilty of murder, as he had confessed to the act.
However, his nonchalance and indifference were a greater crime in the eyes of the court and the society who believed that his behavior towards society and his nonattachment towards life was deplorable. Thus, Meursault was convicted for his crime of being a social nonconformist, a stranger, than his wrongdoing.
Work Cited
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage, 1942. Print.