Thursday, February 24, 2011

Constrained by Honesty

What is freedom?

I don’t think any of us knows what its exact definition is. We all have things in our lives that take advantage of our lives. The power of Meursault is truth and honesty. It words come out of him unfiltered and unrestrained like 'word vomit' (Mean Girls). It got him into more trouble after killing the nameless Arab in the climax of Camus’s The Stranger,

Another issue of this novel, to me, is the lack of consideration for the Arab who got killed by both Meursault and the juror’s of his trial. They were rather preoccupied with the fact that Meursault had not cried at his mother’s funeral. The Arab seems like a disposable life not even worthy of a name. He is often referred to as the nameless Arab. This drives me crazy. Maybe Camus was using Meursault and the juror’s attitudes towards the death an Arab man to reflect the current feeling of the general public of France. Whatever the truth is behind the apathetic reactions to this murder they remain true as horrible as they may be.

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