Why My Mother Died Today

In the very first line of the novel elevates the absurdist concept, " My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I received a telegram from the old people's home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Very sincerely yours.' That doesn't mean anything. It might have been yesterday ''

This is not a normal reaction of a son to the news of his mother’s death. In the very first lines we find Mesusault’s strangeness to the normal feelings and emotions. Camus has portrayed a distance between Meursault and the readers. By this statement he has no intention to scandalize others. Camus here has portrayed a character who has no attachment to the accepted norms of the society. He often experiences an undercurrent of uneasiness as to what is expected of him and moves to apologize without quite knowing what he is guilty of. According to Sartre the opening scene of this novel gives rise to a “sense of shock” because here the protagonist is beyond the touch of death and grief and his perfunctory behavior appears to reveal a deeper …show more content…
We find that when Marie asks him to marry her and he agrees, but feels a certain emotional distance. Here Meursault implies the word “meaninglessness” very well. To him the perception of marriage is different from the others. The certain social norms ‘love’ as a serious matter and ‘marriage’ as an important social institution are one of the ritualized beliefs which Meursault has given up earlier, even he gave up his ambition. Meursault had settled himself into a style of life in which inarticulate personal needs and satisfactions dictate spontaneous responses to the demands of nature and others. In every part of this novel Meursault has retained his ‘unconventional’ attitude but the character proceeds toward a certain mental awakening to