Albert Camus The Stranger - Indifference or the Love of Life

Rainer J. Kaus

University of Cologne

(English translation - revised version October 2004)

Albert Camus' novel, The Stranger, begins with the scene of someone dying. The hero by

the name of Mersault, whose first name is never given, travels to his mother's funeral in

Marengo, a small town eighty kilometres from Algiers, where she spent the last years of her life

in an old people's home. Because of the heat, the vigil by the body and the funeral take place

already one day after his mother's death. Mersault has applied for leave from his boss in Algiers

for the funeral service.

His contact with the gatekeeper, the head of the old people's home, the nurses and the

mother's friends is from the start strained by unsureness, confusion and the seeds of mistrust

caused by the impression of indifference that Mersault communicates. This is announced

verbally in conversations with the gatekeeper about Mersault's feelings about his mother. His

ambivalent behaviour "No", "I don't know", "Perhaps" is a central linguistic marker in the

novel. Mersault's monological and dialogical way of speaking is sparse and hermetic.

The protagonist does not defend himself, but says things plainly just as he perceives and

feels them. Somewhat like a freely associating patient on the couch, he sticks strictly to Freud's

rule of saying everything that occurs to him without paying any regard to morality or social

conventions.

This causes him a lot of trouble and arouses prejudices in the social environment. In view of

his mother's friends at the vigil by the body, Mersault had "the ridiculous feeling that they were

there in order to judge me".1

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1 Albert Camus The Stranger translated from the French by Matthew Ward, New York 1989 p.10.

Camus' style varies. At first we find him with a concise, staccato reporting style (like that of

Hemingway's, which however applies only to the first part of the novel). Later on, however, he

describes yet another sphere of life:

... the pleasures of nature, the enjoyment of bodily states of happiness and the innocent

friendly dealings with his own kind. And here, Mersault's mode of expression changes:

he puts feelings into words, makes associations and expresses satisfaction and joy, and

this by no means in dry, linear sentences.2

Mersault's behaviour, mood and development are translated literarily by the times a day,

especially the evenings when his feelings break out. Thus he describes an evening later on during

his imprisonment, which at the same time signifies the evening of his life, when he hears:

Through the expanse of chambers and court rooms an ice cream vendor blowing his tin

trumpet out in the street. I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore,

but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the

part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed. The

utter pointlessness of whatever I was doing there seized me by the throat.3

Just as Jochen Schimmang described a renaissance of interest in Albert Camus in 1993, so too

today, shortly after Camus ninetieth birthday in 2003, literary interest in this author has been

ignited once again. Simultaneously with this renaissance, Schimmang speaks of a renaissance of

the Mediterranean world with scenes and stories of light, sun, sea, poverty, solitude, old age and

death.4

One could therefore

... speak of a condition mditerrane and indeed, such a concept can be traced

throughout Camus' oeuvre. ... But that does not mean that the condition mditerrane

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2 Brigitte Sndig Albert Camus: Eine Einfhrung in Leben und Werk (Albert Camus: An Introduction to his Life and Work) Leipzig 1988, p.70. 3 Albert Camus The Stranger pp.104f. 4 Cf. Jochen Schimmang Der zrtliche Gleichgltige (The Tender Indifferent One) in: Merkur 1993, No.531 p.542.

represented paradise, that it is friendly, sweet, harmonious.5

A further element that characterizes Mersault is the change of climate, especially the

varying degrees of heat. On the day of the funeral it is very hot:

I was looking at the countryside around me. Seeing the rows of cypress trees leading up

to the hills next to the sky, and the houses standing out here and there against that red and

green earth, I was able to understand Maman better. Evenings in that part of the country

must have been a kind of sad relief. But today, with the sun bearing down, making the

whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive.6

And a bit later on, describing the funeral procession, he writes:

The tar had burst open in the sun. Our feet sank into it, leaving its shiny pulp exposed. ...

I felt a little lost between the blue and white of the sky and the monotony of the colours

around me the sticky black of the tar, the dull black of all the clothes, and the shiny

black of the hearse. All of it ... was making it hard for me to see or think straight.7

At the funeral, a resident of the old people's home and a friend of Mersault's mother appears,

Thomas Perez, who had a close relationship with her, who however loses his way during the

funeral and cannot find the funeral procession.

After that, everything seemed to happen so fast, so deliberately, so naturally, that I don't

remember any of it anymore.8

After the funeral, Mersault drives back straight away to Algiers without spending any

considerable time at the grave. He goes immediately to familiar places such as a restaurant with

the symbolically meaningful name of Cleste, which means 'heavenly' or the vault of heaven.

The next day he meets a former office colleague called Marie at a swimming pool where an

attraction from earlier on is renewed, and the very same evening they start a relationship. They

go to see a film with Fernandel and afterwards go back to Mersault's place.

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5 ibid. p.544. 6 Albert Camus The Stranger p.15. 7 ibid. pp.16f. 8 ibid. p.17.

On Sunday Mersault wakes up and finds himself alone once again. Like every other Sunday,

he is bored and wanders around his apartment a little and indulges in observing life on the

streets, how they become empty and fill up once again, how the trams pass by and how suddenly

rain threatens.

It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now,

that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.9

The following Monday, Mersault goes back to the office. When his boss asks him how old his

mother was, he can only give a vague answer.

In the evening, Mersault speaks with some of the tenants, including Raymond, who invites him

to dinner. During the course of the conversation, Mersault's interest in Raymond increases.

Raymond is a pimp, but calls himself a warehouse manager.

During the week, Mersault goes regularly to work in the office and goes to see films several

times together with his colleague, Emmanuel. At the weekend, Mersault spends a wonderful,

voluptuous day swimming with Marie on the coast outside Algiers, "to a beach with rocks at

either end, bordered by shore grass on the land side".10

Camus speaks of the deep interweaving of living nature with cosmic nature. In view of the

expansive technological developments and extensions of cosmic knowledge in the period after

Camus' death, his view of the ties between humankind and nature gain a new topicality and

significance.

Innocence, stone under stones, home -- these are all names for that original unity in

which humankind as part of itself has become one with itself. ... But this unity does not

last.11

At lunch the next day, Marie asks her boy-friend, Mersault, whether he loves her. He replies:

... that it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad. But as we were

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9 ibid. p.24. 10 ibid. p.34. 11 Annemarie Pieper Albert Camus Munich 1988 p.80.

fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her.12

An elderly tenant in Mersault's block, Salamano, lives alone with his dog. One evening he

knocks on Mersault's door and tells him a story about his lost dog. Mersault tries to calm him

down and tells him to go to the lost dog pound. When he comes back to his flat, Salamano's bed

creaks,

... and from the peculiar little noise coming through the partition, I realized he was

crying. For some reason I thought of Maman.13

This is a telling example of how Mersault reconstructs feelings and at first does not translate

experiences back into emotion.

Raymond calls up Mersault at the office and invites him to come with him to a friends who

owns a beach house near Algiers. After Mersault's initial hesitation because of Marie, Raymond

says straight away that she is invited too.

Raymond's call, however, is not without ulterior motives. He asks Mersault to help him because

he has been followed for some time by a group of Arabs, including the brother of his former

girlfriend.

The same day, Mersault's boss tells him that he wants to open up a branch office in Paris.