What Leads the Reader to Perceive Mersault as a Viceral Character?

‘INTRODUCTION’

Mersault portrays a lack of emotion throughout the book. With events such as the death of his own mother or a marriage proposal seem almost completely indifferent to him than any other mundane events. We can see this, already in the first sentence of the book. ‘’Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.’’  The fact that he does not know when his mother died hints that such an event has no particular effect on him, conveying that he simply does not care. Not that he doesn’t feel the love towards his mother, as through the book he often brings back memories, but that this event is equal to any other in his mind. This points to the fact that life itself is a meaningless drift through time in his mind.  This lack of emotion presents him as a careless and almost evil human being, due to the fact that in the eyes of others he feels no grief. In reality the reader knows that Mersault in fact does not feel any particular emotions towards other people and life in general. However the carelessness that he feels towards the life of others, rather than his own, particularly shines through in his particular situation. This later on in the book, leads to the court making wrong assumptions about him.

Besides the lack of emotion, Mersaults character is strengthened by his straight forward and completely honest replies. The main reason for why other people see him as an outsider is the fact that he does not make an effort to hide his lack of emotion.   ‘’He was just going up to the coffin when I stopped him. He said, ‘Don’t you want to?’ I answered, ‘No.’ He didn’t say anything and I was embarrassed because I felt I shouldn’t have said that.’’ His behaviour is dominated by his senses meaning that he will always portray what he feels according to his surrounding and not the emotions which he lacks. His plain honesty often surprises people because with his replies he breaks society’s moral values portraying his lack of emotion. He often realises that what he said was wrong or immoral however he will never choose to lie about what he feels just because others find it unusual. This honesty drives the whole story because he himself does not realise that such lack of emotion is unusuall however people which do not know him, only see the lack of love which he gives out at his mothers funeral. This is why he ends up with a death sentence.

Lastly besides his lack of emotion, what drives Mersault is also the fact that he cannot distinguish between what is good and what is bad. He can be classified as amoral, which is what the court fails to see.  Upon being proposed to and being asked to write the letter to Raymonds girlfriend, he simply agrees because he ‘’didn’t have a reason not to.’’ Whatever he does is based on how he feels at the moment. He lives in the present and fails to judge whether his actions are moral or whether they will affect his future self in a negative or positive way. This again connects to his lack of emotion and leads him into committing his crime as well as to contributing to Raymonds neglectance of his girlfriend.

In conclusion Mersault does not mean to do anything bad or immoral, however his lack of emotion and instinctive way of thinking leads him into situations one would not like to find himself in. Others perceive him as almost as a monster, because of his lack of emotion towards others. However the reader knows that there must be something wrong in his mind, health-wise, because he fails to care about his future and cannot tell whether whatever he is doing is right or wrong. His honesty reflects all this, to other characters in this book, most of which perceive it in the wrong way.