Part 2, Chapter 5 Observations

As I was reading the last chapter of Camus's The Stranger this past week, I made some notes on my impressions and ideas in the margins.  My goal is to jot these down here, and explain my thoughts a little.

• Meursault goes through a thought process towards the beginning of the chapter which results in his idea that "from the moment [his sentence] had been passed, its consequences became as real and as serious as the wall against which I pressed the length of my body" (110).  This is the first time in the novel that Meursault essentially admits to himself that actions did have consequences.  It is the closest he ever comes to regretting anything, to saying that he regrets not trying to do anything to keep himself from being sentenced to death, or sentenced at all, or from killing the Arab.  The inclusion of this statement brings out a little more humanity in Meursault, because it hints that he is not so focused on the present as it might otherwise seem.
• Meursault is having a very philosophical discussion about being condemned and having no chance when he begins a new paragraph by saying "I was also made to see that until that moment I'd had mistaken ideas about these things" (111).  The reader expects Meursault to continue even more philosophically than before; instead he surprises the reader by discussing stairs on guillotines vs. lack thereof.  This seemed to me starkly simple and anticlimactic compared to what I was expecting.  However, readers are made to recognize the significance of the stairs through a veritably “Bakeresque” focus on the mundane.
• Meursault convinces himself at about the middle of the chapter that he “had to accept the rejection” (114) of his case in court.  He reminds himself that whether he dies now or later really would not matter in the big scheme of things…and yet, he has been constantly promoting this idea throughout the book.  Thus, Camus shows that death is the ultimate test of existentialism, that if one is truly existentialist, they would not care whether or not they died if that was what was happening to them.  And Meursault passes this test in this passage here.
• Meursault discusses Marie and says that since he won’t see her, it doesn’t even matter whether she is alive or dead.  He then says, “I wasn’t even able to tell myself that it was hard to think those things” (115).  This comment begs the question: how and when and where is Meursault writing this novel?  Are readers supposed to assume that because the book ends before Meursault is executed, he is writing the book prior to execution?  The rest of the book seems very immediate, as if Meursault is narrating events as they occur.  And yet, the whole thing is in past tense upon closer inspection.  Interesting…
• How does Meursault’s resolution not to become religious relate to his existentialist views?  I think we answered this question during the panel presentations on Thursday.  Camus sees humans as trying as hard as they can to add meaning to their meaningless lives, so he shows the Meursault sees religion as another one of these attempts at adding significance.
• As Meursault describes his longing to see Marie, he describes her face as “as bright as the sun and the flame of desire” (119).  This comment is interesting because he is comparing her face to the sun even as he had just accused the sun of being guilty of murdering the Arab.  He also complains about the sun during his mother’s funeral and in the courtroom, but it does not bother him when he is swimming, or on his Sunday afternoon.  And the very last mention of the sun in this book after it has played such an important role is in a passing description about Marie’s face, which he had “searched for…in vain” (119).
• At the very end of the chapter, Meursault begins to give more thought to his mother, a fact which in itself is interesting because it shows his love for her that no one else really seemed to have ever seen, maybe not even his mother herself.  In any case, he says that “nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her” (122).  This comment serves as a possible explanation for Meursault’s behavior at his mother’s funeral: if he considers crying disrespectful in some sense, then he was treating his mother with the greatest respect if he did NOT cry, or for that matter show emotion.  .  The fact that this sentence exists in the book serves to shed new light on Meursault’s behavior in the first chapter of the narrative.  It is likely that Meursault also intends his comment to disparage customs behavioral expectations in general, specifically French ones.