The Stranger by Albert Camus

The novel The Stranger, by Albert Camus, is about a character named Meursault, who is influenced by his chance encounters with his surroundings. He has a nonchalant attitude towards life, which parallels an existentialist point of view, meaning he does not believe in hope, destiny, personal will, or God. As a result, he is unattached to people and circumstances in his life. He thinks events and actions happen by chance, not by desire or motive. Therefore his relationship with nature acts as an important environmental stimulus that affects his well-being and direction in life-in particular, his relationship with the sun and light.

This novel has a serious undertone of murder and judgment that Meursault must face. He has killed a man, an Arab, and must face trial. This heavy undertone is offset by his cool detachment. He almost seems innocent because he truly does not feel that he has had a motive to kill this man. When the judge asks why he committed the crime, he can only blame the sun: "Fumbling a little with my words and realizing how ridiculous I sounded, I blurted out that it was because of the sun. People laughed." (103) People laughed. This is the premise of his predicament. Everyone around him is not like him. They find his detachment strange and cold, for instance when he buries his mother after her death, he does not cry or want to see her in the casket. People cannot understand him, but not everyone thinks he is weird. Some of his shady "friends" lead us to believe that chance rules a person's destiny too, like his friend Celeste. When on the stand in court, he says about Meursault's crime, "The way I see it, it's bad luck." (92) However Meursault's friends are not admired in the novel. They are abusive to other people or animals in their own lives. Therefore the "good" characters in this book make Meursault stand out as an outsider and because he is an outsider, his reasons for the murder are all the more intriguing. We are curious about and want to understand Meursault, because why would anyone kill a man because of the sun? Let's examine that day more closely.

Meursault finds himself on the beach with the gun his "friend" Raymond gave him. Meursault went along with Raymond's plan of carrying a gun for protection in case the Arab men (who were after Raymond for hurting a girl) try to hurt Raymond or his cohorts. Meursault is alone on the beach when he sees the Arabs. One of them comes towards him and he clutches the gun in his pocket. But the heat is unbearable in this tense, confrontational situation: "I was walking slowly toward the rocks and I could feel my forehead swelling under the sun. … And every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the thick drunkenness it was spilling over me." (57) Meursault is obviously altered by the heat of the sun into a "drunken" state. His anxieties (nerves), that are already present from the confrontation, heighten as if the sun puts pressure on him. This phenomenon worsens as the scene gets even more tense and the Arab pulls out his knife and holds it up to Meursault in the sun: "The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead. … The scorching blade [of light] slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed my stinging eyes. That's when everything began to reel." (59) It is shortly after this point that he "accidentally" pulls the trigger and shoots the Arab. The sun in the murder scene acts as the environmental force that just happens to be there during the time of the tense moment-a phenomenon of chance.

There are other moments that the sun affects Meursault in positive ways. When he is in the country after his Mother's funeral vigil and he feels peaceful: "The sun was now a little higher in the sky: it was starting to warm my feet." (12) A little bit earlier within that same time period (when he arrives), he wakes from a nap because his back hurts and notices: "Dawn was creeping up over the skylight." (11) We begin to see that whatever Meursault's mood happens to be is reflected in nature (in this case, sun or light) around him. If he feels good, the sun feels warm or nice to him. If he is troubled or tense the sun is his worst enemy.

There are other moments where Meursault comments directly on how the sun feels: "… with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive."(15) Can it be concluded that Meursault feels the sun is what made him inhuman enough to shoot the Arab? He certainly is affected by the sun, for better or worse, and when people feel an outside influence, they are capable to do uncharacteristic things. But this influence is merely laughed at and cannot be an excuse for his innocence, the jury decides, and he ends up in court and prison in the second half of the book.

In part two, we do not hear him mention the sun hardly at all, because he is now constantly indoors (courtroom and jail). Instead of responding to the sun, Meursault is influenced by heat and the dawn. Two attributes that still relate to the sun. He sits in a hot courtroom and feels altered as he did before: "I wiped the sweat covering my face, and I had barely become aware of where I was and what I was doing when I heard the director of the home being called." (89) This moment of disorientation, again, mirrors his mood. He feels accused in court and has anxiety that the director will reveal how cold Meursault seemed in the days surrounding his mother's funeral. These facts could cause the jury to think of Meursault as a cold, uncaring person who is easily seen as a criminal.

Not surprisingly, the anticipation for dawn towards the end of the book that Meursault feels makes sense since his affectation by the sun and by light is a constant influence throughout the book. Prisoners are taken at dawn to the guillotine, his soon-to-be sentence. With all of his experience (mostly negative) of being affected by the sun, he now fears it (and has reason to) completely: " They always came at dawn. I knew that. … I would wait frantically until I heard the sound of my own breathing, terrified to find it so hoarse … " Then at the actual morning of his death, he hears the sirens announcing his coming guillotine fate and yet is pacified in his cell by nature one last time: "Sounds of the countryside were drifting in. Smells of night, earth, and salt air were cooling my temples." (122) Because of his calm he is able to transform the violence of his death into a new beginning. He does not fear death, in fact, he hopes the hate of his opponents will rage loudly to make him feel less alone. Only a personal transformation could make a person look forward to people's hate. Perhaps the sun at dawn can be thought of as a metaphor for Meursault's transformation. He finally "sees the light"-a spiritual saying that indicates a new positive change in a person.

Meursault embraces his influences all throughout the book. It seems his yielding to them is a life-affirmative reaction. Even in his death, he surrenders to the people's hate with happiness and anticipation. His character truly is the world around him, which makes me wonder if Camus is expressing such sentiment intentionally. Meursault has little preference in his life, he just goes along with whatever crosses his path. Whether responding to a girl who likes him or a "friend" (Raymond) who needs his help and protection or a court who sentences him to death; Meursault ultimately accepts the desires and influences around him. The sun proves to be just one of those influences that is always with him, just as the sun rises and sets each and every day for all people on the planet. In fact, the sun is the greatest constant in his life; it is not surprising that it is such a huge influence on Meursault in The Stranger.