Why Meursault kills in 'The Stranger'

The motives for the incident may seem hazy, but are much clearer when you take a closer look at the words of Camus

[This article includes spoilers for Albert Camus’s The Stranger]

Albert Camus is known for opening his books with punches to the face. Though the opening line of The Stranger - “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know" – seems innocuous, but its importance becomes clear as we understand the protagonist Meursault’s motive for taking the most notable action in the book – the killing of the Arab. 

At first, the sentence seems to show Meursault's indifferent attitude toward his mother's death. However, this isn't how he really feels. It is, in fact, the strength of his feeling towards his mother that leads him to his final fate. 

An important clue here is the sun.  

During his interrogation on the killing of the Arab, Meursault blames the sun. Everyone in court laughs, but he is actually telling the truth. It was the sun that pushed him to pull the trigger. How do we know he is being honest? Camus said so himself. In the American edition of The Outsider, translated by Stuart Gilbert, Camus commented, “he (Meursault) doesn’t play the game… He refuses to lie.”

Meursault never lies. His attitude in court and the one towards the character of Marie makes this apparent. No matter what the situation may be, he always chooses to be honest, even if it means hurting his lover’s feelings or confessing a crime. But how could the sun be responsible for the murder?

It is because the sun reminded him of his mother’s death. 

Meursault loved his mother with the affection of a child. The very first word of the novel is proof. If you read Mathew Ward's translation of the novel, you will get the closest idea to what Camus tried to write in French. While many translators translated the first word of the novel to "Mother", Ward preserved the original French by keeping it "Maman". In French, the word mother can be ‘mère’ or ‘maman’. The difference is mère is the word adults generally use to address their mother, while kids call their mother maman. Meursault, despite being an adult, calls his mother maman, which shows that he still feels toward his mother as a child does. 

That strong emotional bond, sense of intimacy, and closeness are still alive within Meursault’s heart till the end of the novel. These feelings are beyond logic. Due to this profound sense of love, her death hurts Meursault as if he were still a child.

But, in the book, Meursault doesn’t show any outward signs of remorse. Not a single tear left his eyes throughout the entire funeral. However, this doesn’t mean he wasn’t sad. His emotions were simply expressed differently. The frustration within him manifested in the form of violence, in the form of murder. 

But why did the frustration have to come at the moment when the Arab was there? This is where the sun comes in. 

If you take a closer look at the novel, you will notice similarities between the description of the weather during Meursault's mother's funeral and the time of the murder. The description of the sun when Meursault kills the Arab includes the same scorching sensation he felt at his mother's funeral. In both cases, Camus describes the sun and its effect in great detail.

In both cases, the sun glared down from above, hot and oppressive and Meursault was having a physical reaction as sweat poured down his face. It irritates and torments Meursault. In fact, at one point, Meursault says, 

“The sun was the same as it had been the day I’d buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin.”

Mersault’s act of murder is simply an act of frustration. He just had to push out the feeling that the sun slowly boiled within him. As he says:

“It occurred to me that all I had to do was turn around and that would be the end of it. But the whole beach, throbbing in the sun, was pressing on my back”.

Mersault’s heart-wrenching sadness for his mother, which could not find release during her funeral, suddenly bursts forth before he shoots the Arab. The sun – acting as a pressure cooker and memento both – pushes him to action.  

If the sun had not been there, if it was a moonlit night or cloudy noon, Meursault wouldn't have been reminded of his mother, the frustration wouldn’t have sprouted within him and he wouldn’t have fired four shots into the Arab. 

I probably sound as if I am excusing Meursault even though he committed a crime. That is not true. I find something resonant in the character, but I will never say he is not guilty. Probably the appropriate way to pen the situation is by saying that while it is factually correct that Meursault is guilty of the murder, it is also true that he is not entirely responsible. 

Meursault’s mother died in Marengo, Algeria – a location by the Tyrrhenian Sea. When he kills the Arab, he is by the seaside with the sun beating down on him. The sun and the sea – together – remind him of his mother’s death and spur him to murder.

But, in those very words, we can see that Meursault is guilty. After all, in French, Meursault means ‘of sun and the sea’.

This article was written for Stripe, bdnews24.com's special publication with a focus on culture and society from a youth perspective.