Meursault In O Brien's The Things They Carried

As a result, this forces the Arabs to become the only signifier we have for the history of the country. As the court proceeding continues, we learn that Meursault is actually on trial for his indifference rather than his murderous deed, ‘the horror which that crime aroused in him was almost overshadowed by the horror he felt at my cold indifference.’ This complicates the structure of power within the novel, as Meursault was still convicted and was not granted the expected flexibility for his crimes. However, there is still an imbalance through the dismissal of the now dead Arab; the coloniser’s life is still weighted above those that it dominates. O’Brien states that ‘by suggesting that the court is impartial between an Arab and Frenchman, the novel implicitly denies the colonial reality.’ As a result, Camus forgoes this impartiality and alters the trial so that it is focused on man’s rationality versus societal expectations; he detaches the trial from colonial discourse. As Meursault is ultimately convicted for not following the system, we can see this as upholding the notion that the French-Algerian is also a native. In a sense, Meursault can be considered as being similar to Arabs since they both experience a form of societal constriction. Thus, through Camus’ idealism and the trial, the idea of the native is again complicated. …show more content…
Consequently, if Camus were to stick with the initial trial of the Frenchman versus the Arab, then the text could be explored as questioning the imperialist doctrine that European life is more important than the indigenous