The Stranger 3

Motifs:

The movies

Swimming

Meursault wanting Marie

Raymond beating up girls

Meursault doesn’t like cops

Nothing matters to Meursault and he agrees to do things people tell him to do

Meursault likes liquor, smoking and sex

Meursault is so freaking indifferent and apathetic to everything! It's annoying!

Meursault is apathetic about marriage.

Meursault has a hard time waking up on Sunday

Marie laughing

The Arabs are only described as the Arabs and they never talk.

The Stranger is an appropriate title to this text because Meursault is so indifferent to the society around him. He feels that the world is pointless because in the end the result is the same; everybody dies. Marie and Raymond have opinions about their life and act on their opinions. Meursault only acts on impulses and his wants and what people tell him to do. Meursault doesn’t function the way other character function in the book. Meursault is very introverted and is irritable with other people when he must explain his thoughts to them. Meursault is a stranger is his society not only emotionally but socially as well. We learn that Meursault is from Paris. We can assume he is a Pied Noirs. This means he is despised from the local inhabitants of Algiers for his superior rights, but he is viewed as inferior to the people in Paris because he has fewer rights in Paris.

The fact that the cop slapped Raymonds face shows how the standards in Algiers are different from America. Also Raymond gets off with a warning for beating the girl when it is obvious that he did beat her up. He just said that the girl cheated on him and the police were ok with that. The society is obviously male dominated. What I mean by that is that the men have the majority of the power and rights in Algiers.