Mersault Setting

For most people, the environment may have an effect on your mood and your actions. However, for Mersault, the main character from Albert Camus’ The Stranger, the effect that nature has on him is so tremendous that it influences him to commit the irrational murder of an Arab. Camus uses literary techniques and devices when describing Mersault’s killing of the Arab to highlight the extraordinary effect that Mersault’s physical stimuli have on him. Camus does so using imagery, similes, personification, and juxtaposition. It is important to understand the effect that Mersault’s setting has on him because with knowing this one can have a fuller understanding of why Mersault acts and feels so absurdly. By putting narration in the first person, Camus uses imagery to stress the numerous and …show more content…
When Mersault goes to find the spring to relieve himself from the torture of the sun and finds the Arab at the stream, he compares the inhumane sun to the sun “the day [he’d] married Maman”(58). The effect of nature on Mersault’s emotions is highlighted in this simile in that it proves that the grueling sun is what caused Mersault to act irrationally, as he did at both his mother’s funeral and in his killing of the Arab. Camus makes another simile after Mersault kills the Arab stating that the four shots that Mersault made at the Arab were “like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness”(59). Because Mersault killed the Arab because of the harsh intensity of the sun, this simile exemplifies that the effect that nature has on Mersault is so profound that they cause Mersault to intently do things that he knows may cause him unhappiness and suffering. All in all, similes help Camus to emphasize the huge effect that nature can have on Mersault by showing that they can influence him to act in a way that is inappropriate or