trigger yields. The Arab, the sun’s rays striking off the blade of the knife, the
taut grasp of the revolver – all are part of one natural environment whose
elements are in tension with one another. Whom can one ask for a motive? The environment is returned to equilibrium by the removal of a nexus of tension. That is all.
But Meursault is a human being and a member of society, and its officials soon see that much more is at stake than simply the killing of an Arab by a French Algerian—about which, it should be noted, little official concern was likely to have been expressed at that time. “For the magistrate,” writes Barrier, in his perceptive study of The Stranger, “a consciousness which is so non-human represents the grave threat of dismantling the entire edifice of values upon which the very order of society is based” (Barrier, 69).
Two points should be noted here. Meursault is portrayed as a brute, a person so cold and calculating as to smoke at his mother’s funeral, begin a liaison on the following day, and commit pre-meditated murder without the least feeling of remorse. Such a “moral monster” would of course be a threat to any order. But Meursault is still more threatening, for he does not even recognize, not to say acknowledge, the values and norms by which the fabric of society is woven together. If he would repent and admit guilt, he would at least implicitly legitimize the claim of those values. Even a murderer can be pardoned—far more easily, Camus suggests, than one who not only refuses to acknowledge social norms, but fails even to perceive their existence.
His refusal thus constitutes a sort of inarticulate metaphysical rejection by which he places himself beyond the horizon of the normal social world. As a spiritual alien upon whom accepted social absolutes make no claim, his being can only appear to the “good people” as a threat to the values and beliefs that are dear to them.
But why, one might ask, must the officials insist upon portraying Meursault as a ruthless killer, one who is morally guilty of matricide? Why must such evil motives be imputed to him in the first place? Why must society— in the persons of the magistrate, defense attorney, and prosecutor—refuse in principle to see him as he is?
We might reflect here upon the problem faced by the early Christians who had to come to terms with the Jews’ rejection of Christ as the Messiah. With unbelieving pagans a more energetic propagation of the faith would have sufficed. But the challenge posed by the Jews was of another order. To them the revelation had been given. How can one account for the rejection of a faith that seems both self-evident and salvific? If Christians were not to doubt their faith’s evidence, truth, or significance, what were they to make of the Jews’ rejection? Either the Jews were ignorant innocents—like children or, perhaps, brutes—or they were willful, insensitive, and possibly downright evil.
Similarly, Meursault is too intelligent to be dismissed as a fool, but his attitude directly challenges the certainty with which the established order confronts the cosmic abyss. By imputing an evil nature to him, the prosecutor can both bring him within the normal cosmic drama and explain the specific reason for his behavior. Let’s look at this logic. “To understand is, above all, to unify. The mind’s deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man’s unconscious feeling in the face of his universe; it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity. Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal” (MS, 13).
A motive, no matter how malevolent, bespeaks an intelligible individual. A motivated act is an intelligible act; its world, a familiar world. To insist upon there being a motive—to insist so unself-consciously that the possibility that there might not be one does not even arise—while, at the same time, characterizing that motive as the willful rejection of humane sensibilities, here truly is the “best of all possible worlds.” Presented with a criminal who is metaphysically comprehensible but morally reprehensible, society may, at one and the same time, reaffirm its cosmic drama and purge itself momentarily of any repressed and taboo inclinations that threaten to shatter it.
What would it mean to accept Meursault as he presents himself? How would we make sense of a world in which chance was pervasive, and in which natural processes predominated to no purpose? Would not a recognition of the essential arbitrariness of the social order and its hierarchies circumscribe the domain of meaning, rendering it contingent and without direction?
And what of the “justice” system? And the organization of power and social prerogatives? Is it any wonder that an “evil” Meursault is more intelligible and less threatening than a impulsive one?
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. . . . On the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity (MS, 5).
Meursault is thus inadvertently the most dangerous of rebels, for he rejects the metaphysical foundation of normal social order. As a de facto rebel who becomes conscious of his rebellion only at the end, her must be “put in his place.” Society must either obtain his complicity or his destruction. That is the way with absolutes. They brook no opposition.4
Barrier correctly observes that for Camus “Meursault is innocent of the moral crime of which he is accused and the society guilty for condemning him for such a crime” (Barrier, 74). Rather, Meursault’s revolt, involving as it does a reaffirmation of the manner in which he lived his life, contains for Camus elements essential to the establishment and maintenance of human dignity
CONSCIOUSNESS AND DEATH
Having been indicted for “not playing the game,” Meursault will no longer be allowed to freely follow the flow of his feelings. Viewed as a criminal, he will learn deprivation. At first, quite naturally his attention turns toward his immediate surroundings. But that is not long sustaining. Cut off from the world, he is forced back upon himself. Robbed of access to space, and confronted with the fact that he can no longer take the future for granted, he begins to think about his past life—and especially Marie.
With the slow awakening of his memory, a new depth of being emerges. He begins to appear as a being “for himself.” Rather than just being there, his life appears as something to be lived, valued, retained, reconstituted, reaffirmed, and, perhaps, redirected. It is to be reflectively taken in hand, to be consciously molded in accord with his personal evaluation of what matters.
Memory fuels self-consciousness, as habituated passivity gives way to lucid affirmation. This subterranean transition develops throughout Part 2, reaching its culmination in the encounter with the chaplain. At first, he is called upon to recount his life. Repeatedly he must retell the story of the beach confrontation. Then, as days turn into weeks and months, the rhythm of the days fades into the monotony of an unchanging present. With the turn inward, the being that he is “for himself” begins to emerge, fascinating him. He finds a reflected image of himself in a mirror. He is drawn to the journalist who suggests the being he might have been. The automaton woman reappears— that being who is completely other than himself—and there seems to be a mutual fascination with each other: she, for whom every action is rationally precalculated and purposeful; he, for whom none had been. It is as if the journalist and the automaton woman are the mirrors wherein Meursault may see the range of beings he might have been.
As Meursault comes to self-awareness, the narrative undergoes stylistic transformation. In place of the seemingly unedited description of chance events in temporal order, we now have the selective reporting of particular events. Long periods are now condensed into a few paragraphs, while a single significant day requires its own chapter. Important encounters are presented in detail, while others drift into obscurity. And judgments emerge, almost unintentionally. But it is the encounter with the chaplain following the condemnation to death that is required to make this existential transformation explicit.5
Without doubt the thought of death can remarkably concentrate one’s attention. Today and tomorrow can be taken as they come only so long as one expects them to keep coming. Once the death sentence is handed down, the image of the guillotine looms over our horizon, threatening decisively to sever our relation with our future possibilities. And so with Patrice.
No matter how hard I tried to persuade myself, I could not accept that insolent certitude. Because, in the final analysis, it came to a disproportion between the judgment on which the certitude was based and its imperturbable course, from the moment when this judgment had been pronounced. The fact that the sentence had been read at eight o’clock rather than at five, that it might have been something entirely different… it seemed to me that all of this took away from the seriousness of such a verdict (STR, 89-91).