Nature's Overwhelming Power In The Stranger, By Albert Camus

Nature’s Overwhelming Power over Mersault For most people, the environment can 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 act irrationally, inappropriately, and illegally. 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, metaphors, 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 feels and acts in such an absurd manner. By putting narration in the first person, Camus’ use of imagery stresses the numerous and detailed observations …show more content…
The first two times that Mersault goes to the beach, he describes the sun and the heat in a peaceful tone stating that it “made [him] doze off” and made him feel “half-asleep”(51,53). Then, a tone shift occurs when Mersault notices the two Arabs at the beach in which Mersault states that “the blazing sand looked red to [him] now”(53). After this tonal shift Mersault views the sun as an oppressing force and in his confrontation with the Arab Mersault expresses that “the whole beach, throbbing in the sun, was pressing on [his] back”(58). By placing both of the effects that the sun has on Mersault, one calming and the other discomforting, in the same chapter, Camus juxtaposes two very different and very powerful effects the sun has on Mersault showing the vast spectrum of influence that Mersault’s environment can have on him. On the whole, Camus uses juxtaposition to spotlight the massive and differing effects that Mersault’s environment can have on