How Does Mersault Use Heat

In the existentialist novel, The Stranger, Camus uses the heat as a motif and symbol to focus on the day of his mother’s funeral, the day he committed the crime, and Mersault’s feelings that he cannot deal with. The novel was about a man whose mother had died and he didn’t believe that he cared until he got flashbacks and killed a man. Soon after his mother died Meursault is making friends and going out. He gets into some trouble and ends up in jail. He goes through trial and doesn’t make it. Each time heat is mention there is something important happening. Constantly throughout out this novel Mersault uses the heat as reasons why he can’t hear and/or see.
Mersault didn’t have a real connection with his mother. When she died he took off work and went straight down to her. He met the people she was around in the nursing home. They sat around her body until it was time for the funeral. He walked a lot in the heat and couldn’t focus on the fact that his mother was gone. “The procession seemed to me to be moving a little faster. All around me there was still the same glowing countryside flooded with sunlight. The glare from the sky was unbearable.” Right away he was ready to go home after the …show more content…
Raymond had an argument with one of his girls and hit her. Meursault didn’t know he was grieving until after the sun was burning. “The sun was the same as it had been the day I buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin” (Camus, 58) The whole situation with the Arab was Raymond’s fault for beating the girl. Meursault testified because he felt it was the right thing t do. When the Arab approached him all he had was the gun and grief. “And this time, without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun. The light shot off the steel and it was like long flashing blade cutting at my forehead” (Camus,