Camus

The first sentence of the novel, "Maman died today", is one of the most famous in literature. What is especially noticeable though is the sentence which follows. Mersault is not sure whether it was today or yesterday his mother died. This indifference to detail and time will categorize Mersault's personality throughout the novel. The details of the telegram which he does discuss only concern hisuncertainty of the date. He mentions nothing else of the telegram's effect on him.

The jarring effect of his curt and emotionless description is reflected in the style of the prose. The sentences are sharp and concise, consisting of mainly simple action verbs. The reader is advised of nearly all of Mersault's movements as he makes his decisions -- from which bus he will take, to what he saidto his boss, and where he likes to eat. The paradoxical situation presented is that the text is not in the present tense, but the past tense predominately, and very few lines of dialogue are given. The reader should thus pay close attention to the speech which is presented in dialogue form. The first statement in quotation marks we hear from any character comes from Mersault as he claims that hismother's death and his having to miss work are not his fault. This focus on the narrator while simultaneously distancing the narrator from events and responsibility is central to the tone created by Camus.

Several times during the first chapter, Mersault falls asleep. First, on the bus to the home he provides several reasons why it may have happened. At each juncture of his sleeping he pointsout elements in the environment which would have led to his sleeping. We are thus led to believe that the sleep was beyond his control, that it was brought on by elements of the situation, and that the sleep happened to the passive Mersault. In a sense, the reader becomes connected to Mersault as an everyman character because what happened to Mersault would likely have happened to anyone at thatmoment. The identification with Mersault is clouded with the paradox of his sleeping through the chapter and many of its events. He is everyman and yet he experiences everything with very little emotion, unlike most people would. He is sleepwalking through his life. Symbolically as he crosses the country for his own mother's funeral, led to the scene of her death, he blanks out, taking a morepassive role in the journey. Cyclically, on the way home, the first mention of his joy is given. Happiness is found for Mersault in conjunction with the promise of sleep.

Seemingly Mersault can blot out the living moments of his existence and remember solely what he wishes, as he does with the slices of memory he retains from the funeral. Notice how the mother's woman friend and M. Pérez are theonly ones who cry. Mersault remembers this instance yet transforms it into a caricature, removed from himself. In the text, images float by and are reduced to a quick mention or a list of events, separated by commas. He is melted by the hot sun more than by the funeral of his mother and thus gives more attention in detail to that as it is a bodily and not emotive response. Mersault feels littlecontact with the imposed reality of humanity on the naturalness of the daily and minute events he participates in, a theme which will follow us throughout the novel.

Chapter 2 Summary:

Upon waking up from his 12 hour sleep, Meursault realizes that it is Saturday and that he will, in effect, receive a total of four days off from work. No wonder his boss was annoyed, he thinks, although it is nothis fault that Maman died or that the two days he asked for fell right before the weekend. Meursault finally pulls himself out of bed, washes, and decides to go for a swim. At the beach, he runs into Marie Cardona, a former typist at his office to whom he had been attracted. Still attracted, he sits with her on a float and rests his head on her stomach. They decide to go to the movies that...