Who is Meursault?

This is my second time reading The Stranger, and I still wonder about Meursault's character.

In some ways, I feel like I can identify with Meursault. I remember feeling a connection when I read the first few pages originally, at this depiction of grief that wasn't full of sobbing and screaming but a detachment, a numbness that was closer to my own emotion when my dad died. I couldn't bear the real extent of my emotions and so I tried to pretend that they didn't exist.

Inside it was all I could think about. The thing I was most afraid of in the world had happened. The person who loved me more than anyone, who was so proud of me, was suddenly gone. This nameless pain filled every corner of my body and I could feel it in everything I did, but I couldn't bring myself to express it. If someone else even mentioned him, I was seized with a terrible panic my mind immediately scrambled desperately to suppress.

I wanted to cry, more than anything, but I couldn't no matter how hard I tried. I was afraid that if I let myself feel, I would never return from my grief. I was afraid to think of it and yet at the same time it was already always there, following me. In attempting to escape it, all it did was consume me. The memory of him collapsing on the kitchen floor, gasping for breath, moments after I had hugged him for the last time, played endlessly in my head. Whenever I saw or heard an ambulance my heart would start pounding. But I just kept pushing it back.

Ultimately, I can't completely relate to Meursault. I do think that his detachment comes from repressing his feelings, not lack of emotion; that he does love his mother, but that he can't allow himself to feel his true grief. He states several times that "It's not [his] fault," showing that he is defensive, that he feels guilty about their relationship and that he thinks he could have done better. As he hears Salamano crying over the loss of his dog, he says, "For some reason I thought of Maman. But I had to get up early the next morning," implying to me not that he doesn't care, but that it's too painful for him to continue thinking about her and thus he has to make up an excuse to prevent himself from going further.

However, it also seems like Meursault's detachment stems from somewhere deeper. The way he speaks about his life, it appears that he has seen the world in this listless way long before the death of his mother, though it may have amplified it. He is primarily an observer, he presents vivid pictures of others' words and movement -- but the only times he describes someone with an emotion rather than detailing their actions, it is vague and childlike: "[Marie] looked sad." It seems like something must have happened in his life that impaired his perception of feelings, both others and his own.

At times, his responses to situations are even bizarre. "So we took our time getting back, [Raymond] telling me how glad he was that he'd been able to give the woman what she deserved. I found him very friendly with me and I thought it was a nice moment," Meursault says. He has no problem with Raymond beating and abusing his girlfriend. He is even supportive, agreeing to be a witness and state that Raymond's girlfriend was unfaithful though neither of them have any real proof whatsoever (and as if, even if they did, this would excuse the abuse).

He seems to have no real empathy whatsoever, for Raymond's girlfriend, Marie, Salamano, or anyone else. I can't imagine being totally unaffected by the emotions of others, especially to the point of condoning abuse. Meursault simply goes along with Raymond's suggestions, simply because he has "no reason not to please him," seemingly believing that his actions don't matter one way or another. Love is similarly apathetic in his eyes, judging from his conversations with Marie.

Who is Meursault? I don't think he even knows himself.

Do we live in a world that is meaningful and makes sense?

I have to ask myself a few questions about the question.

I can't help it.

So, here goes:

Does something have to make sense in order for it to be meaningful? Conversely, does something have to be meaningful in order for it to make sense?

I really don't think so. Some things that I find meaningful seem to make no sense whatsoever to most other people. So many things and constructs that allegedly make sense are utterly meaningless to me. 'Sense' and 'meaning' can go hand in hand, but they certainly don't have to, and sometimes it's frankly impossible for them to.

Does life make sense to me? No. Hell no.

I don't mean the fact that we physically exist (though I guess you could say that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either) -- I mean life as in what we are living at this moment, the events and situations that we go through, the emotions that we feel. A lot of this is simply unexplainable, whether because it is so beautiful, so cruel, so completely bewildering, or something else entirely.

I can't really say that anything I do makes sense, or that it serves some objective function. There have been times where I have felt so hopeless, so worthless because it seemed like I had no purpose. Like my existence was just superfluous.

I came to realize that perhaps existence is inexplicable, but that doesn't mean it has to lack meaning -- you have to let yourself be open to meaning if you expect it to present itself to you, and sometimes you have to seek it. I guess it doesn't have to have meaning, either. But sometimes it's already there right in front of us, or even inside of us.

And-- if you truly believe that there is no meaning anywhere whatsoever, why keep going? Even in our darkest moments, I think we must see that something could be out there.

In the movie, Caterine states that life is "chaos and meaninglessness," but obviously her beliefs are meaningful to her, because she's working to spread them. If life was completely pointless, why would she continue to live it? Tommy, similarly, asserts that life has no real meaning, but why would sweatshops and petroleum matter to him if that was the case? As his girlfriend says, "If nothing matters, how can I matter?"

He is clearly affected by her leaving, and being kept away from his daughter, so clearly his family is important to him. Tommy also says that people can't really connect to each other, but he and Albert simultaneously become closer in the process of following Caterine; just as Albert's attempt to be "liberated" from Brad leads to him discovering that they are ultimately bonded.

Life is made up of all these contradictions. It makes sense, it doesn't make sense, it's meaningful, it's not meaningful, you feel like you can't go on, but you do. All of it is true and none of it is true. I think this is why it succeeds as a comedy -- life isn't explainable, humor isn't explainable...and we just keep taking ourselves so seriously. :)

At the end of I ♥ HUCKABEES, Albert recognizes that it's all made up of "two overlapping, fractured philosophies." He's gone through believing that it's all connected and believing that it's all not, believing that it's all meaningful and believing that it's all not, and is left with the understanding that, well, it's kind of both and kind of neither.

I agree.

HOMEWORK #5

So. Part IV of this lecture made me want to rip my hair out.

After telling us that we are absolute individuals, we cannot understand one another, we act in 'bad faith' and try to convince ourselves that external influences govern us, but true happiness is only found within, Banach suddenly asserts that "we must choose courses of action that we would wish all humans to take," and, to top it off, this:

"[To] act authentically [...] one must act in a way that ignores the differences between oneself and other people. These differences are merely external and do not affect our identity as free agents, within our islands of subjectivity."

Does not compute.

Am I just missing something here, or is Banach now stating that internally we are all essentially the same? How does this fit in with his idea of being an absolute individual, unable to feel what anyone else feels or vice versa? If we are to think of how we would want others to act before we act, doesn't that involve external influences?

Doesn't acting as I would have others act entail judging how others act based on my subjective morals or thoughts? Or would you be judging how closely their actions align with their ideals?

If we are individuals, is it even possible for us to look at our actions objectively and base them upon what we would have others do? Or is doing that inherently subjective? Is that subjectivity the point, is that what makes it authentic? But is it authentic to think about your actions universally?

What if what you personally want to do or think you should do is different from what you would have someone else do?

He also says that for a person to be free, "everyone must be free". Again, how does this support his prior rendering of individualism? If as he says an individual can find happiness from within, why not freedom? Wouldn't this imply that no one is free, because it's obviously impossible for everyone in the world to be free, or even to contemplate freedom? Who decides what freedom is? If someone finds freedom inside a cage, what does that mean?

Is it possible to be free but not happy, or happy but not free? Is one more important than the other?

Can we be truly be happy if others are unhappy? If true happiness comes only from within, does unhappiness, also? Is being unhappy a choice, a decision, a state you are resigning yourself to? "You say that I choose sadness, that it never once has chosen me." Or is unhappiness based upon external influence, and thus not 'true'? Is there any true unhappiness? Is unhappiness ultimately false, as we fool ourselves into thinking that there is no way we can make ourselves happy? Or is it perhaps the other way around?

...As usual, I'm left with more questions than answers.