Meursault
Meursault is emotionally detached from the world around him and take life to be meaningless. The events that seem to be significant to the vast number of people, for instance, death cases, marriage proposals, all do not matter to him. Not even at an emotional level. Meursault shows his psychological detachment by not also caring about the death of his mother and that even Marie loves him. Meursault tends to reveal himself to be indifferent toward emotion and interaction with other people. Instead of being devastated at the news of the death of his mother, he is detached and cold. He is neither unhappy or even happy about death and utterly indifferent.
When he receives the telegram about the mother’s death, his primary concern is figuring out on which day his mother died. He can know which day his mother died. “Mother died today, Or, maybe, yesterday” (Camus 3). Moreover, Meursault portrayed his meaningless of life after murdering the Arad. He views the killing of the Arab as something that just “happened” at the sun-drenched beach: irrational and without cold-bloodedness. In the concept of responsibility become involved, the action of murder is utterly indefensible. Camus, in his book on The Stranger, explained that Meursault was not able to get to the heart of the matter, therefore looking for life as meaningless. Similarly, in The Myth of Sisyphus, all humans behave the same when confronting issues of mortality (Camus 1).
Also, Meursault perceives death as something which makes human life meaningless. Therefore, Camus states that the attitude of Meursault towards life is similar to that of Sisyphus. Since life is meaningless, he does not show grief for his mother’s death. “Why should he be deeply sorrowful about something inevitable in all humans’ lives”? The statement is also portrayed by Kid Cudi in the pursuit of happiness when he says that, “Driving drunk I’m doing my thing.” That is why between Meursault choosing to shoot the Arab or not shooting, he finally shoots. Meursault does not murder because he saw the Arab as less than human. He sees every person, even himself, as less than human.
According to Camus, Meursault is honest in his life; for instance, Meursault is honesty to the “truth -of- feeling only.” Thus, understanding Meursault as someone consistent both in his truth of feeling and his behavior, in his indifference feeling, is the feeling of an absurd man. The honesty trait of Meursault is also showed in the Pink Floyd Lyrics, where it states, “And then one day you find ten years have got behind you, No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” When it comes to love, Meursault has an attitude that is very different from most people. He believes that love “does not mean anything, but that did not think” (Camus 35) he loved Marie. Marie asks Meursault if he will marry her. He replied that “it does not make any difference to him and that they could if she wanted to” (Camus 41). He says he will marry her to please her, by doing what she wants, he is conforming and doing what others want him to do. In Pink Floyd’s song, the artist states that “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” The reflects the love of Meursault towards Marie
A detached guy is considered cold and pathetic, but a blatant nonconformist is thought amoral. Conformity and morality might be the same? Are rules of society necessarily in the right? For Camus, his liberation revelation is built on the view that, in a senseless and meaningless world, community, its rules, and its morality are… ridiculous and meaningless. Meursault is unfairly tried because he is judged by one, subjective set of societal values. The irrationality of the absurdist’s world stems from the society values facts: that anyone given title can be applied as a standard to all people. Meursault only exiles himself from society since he does not understand its constructs. He is not, and in fact, cannot be free to choose; his ignorance hinders him. Meursault’s stupidity of pursuing his desires related by Kid Cudi in the pursuit of happiness, “why’d I drink so much and smoke so much? Oh”.
Works Cited
Camus, Albert. The myth of Sisyphus. Penguin UK, 2013.
“Pursuit of Happiness” by Kid Cudi.
“Time” by Pink Floyd.
Camus, Albert. The stranger. New York: Vintage International. 1989, Print.