The Stranger

“Meursault is a body without a soul. His pleasures and discomforts are purely tactile and sensory, with no admixture of emotion or spiritual awareness.” Meursault is the narrator and main character of Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger. Looking into the title of the novel deeper, one can refer to “the stranger” as Meursault. Referring to Meursault as a body without a soul is a very accurate description of him. He does not show any emotion to the people around him and his feelings are very different. His feelings are tactile and sensory, leaving him an a removed position to others. He is emotionally impassive to others and refuses to cohere to normally societal orders. His three main traits include being honest, amoral, and even existential. …show more content…
There is no emotion connect to his feelings, so there is no shame that he can feel by revealing his true feelings towards others. For example, when Raymond asks Meursault to write a letter to his mistress so that he can get back at her for cheating on him, Meursault says that he has no reason not to write the letter for him. “But, Raymond told me, he didn’t feel up to writing the kind of letter that was needed, and that was where I could help. When I didn’t say anything, he asked me if I’d mind doing it right away, and I said, ‘No,’ I’d have a shot at it … I wrote the letter. I didn’t take much trouble over it, but I wanted to satisfy Raymond, as I’d no reason not to satisfy him.” Because he is honest, Meursault also does not feel the need to hide any of his emotions or fake any emotions. Even during his mother’s funeral, he does not shed a tear or even show any sorrow. This does not make him a moral or immoral person. It makes him more of an amoral …show more content…
He does not recognize any form of meaning to human life. He has no spiritual views and towards the end of the novel after his trial and when he is sentenced to death by guillotine, Meursault is offered service from a chaplain in his cell and he denies him because he denies the existence of God. After the chaplain tells him that he is just desperate, Meursault tells him the he is just afraid, not desperate. “He looked away and, without altering his posture, asked if it was because I felt utterly desperate that I spoke like this. I explained that it wasn’t despair I felt, but fear—which was natural enough.” Meursault made the argument with the chaplain that he did not have much time left, so he was not going to waste it on God or any religious belief that gives no meaning to life. Questioning himself about the existence of God held such little meaning to Meursault - just as much as questioning himself about the true meaning to