Jun
05
2012
The Stranger: Part 2, Chapter 1
Editors' Note: For more on Commending the Classics, read Ryken on "Why Christians Should Read Camus" and his introduction to The Stranger. See also:
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Part 1, Chapter 2
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- Part 1, Chapter 4
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Part 1, Chapter 6
**********
Plot summary: This chapter is devoted to Meursault's interviews with the examining magistrate and his court-appointed lawyer. Depending on our familiarity with television programs in the genre of The First 48, Mersault's examination follows a thoroughly familiar contour. As readers we have prior information about the defendant and the circumstances of the murder, but the people who interrogate Meursault start "from scratch." Dialogue replaces the first-person narrative that dominated part one. This chapter revisits the events of part one but this time in the interrogative mood and with a concern to explain events for someone who did not live through them as we did.
Entering a Legal World
In my commentary on the opening chapters of The Stranger, I stressed the idea of a narrative world. I quoted a literary critic who observed that we begin as outside spectators of the narrative world but rather quickly become residents. Part two transports us to an entirely different world from part one, and the opening chapter of part two initiates us. It is a judicial and penal world governed by the protocol of legal proceedings. The physical locations for part two will be the prison and the courtroom, and the time span will be approximately one year. For me, no other literary work catch match this one for making me feel what it is like to be imprisoned and on trial.
For Meursault, too, life in prison is an initiation. He confides with a sense of novelty and surrealism, "I had read descriptions of scenes like this in books." By the end of the chapter Meursault (after 11 months in prison) finds the examination routine so familiar that he feels as though he belongs to the same family with the magistrate and lawyer.
For reflection or discussion: One of the unifying strands in chapter one is the protagonist's initiation into his new life as an accused criminal. He (being the narrator of the story) records the story of his early perplexity with prison life and legal proceedings and his eventual acceptance. What moments or statements by Meursault contribute to his story of initiation? What do we learn as he records his adjustment to this world? Additionally, if Meursault responds to the judicial and penal world, so do we. How? Although this world may be remote from ours, we can safely assume that the nature of judicial proceedings in chapter one is universal.
Trying to Make Sense of the Criminal and His Crime
A second stream that flows through chapter one is the attempt of society to explain the exact nature of Meursault's crime and reach an understanding of the criminal. This attempt by society to explain the murder will keep building to a grand crescendo in the chapters that follow, culminating at the trial.
For example, Meursault's behavior at his mother's funeral emerges as a leading concern already in this chapter. The lawyer informs his client that an inquiry into events surrounding his mother's funeral had yielded a verdict by observers in Marengo that Meursault had been unfeeling and insensitive. Further, the lawyer insists that it is important to his defense that Meursault offer a rebuttal to the charge of having been insensitive.
A litany of further questions belongs to the motif of society's quest to find a logical explanation for Meursault's behavior. Did Meursault love his mother? Why did Meursault fire five consecutive shots? Why did he pause between the first and second shots? Does Meursault regret what he did?
As readers we already know the answers to much of what the magistrate and lawyer attempt to discover. We know their questions miss the mark. The literary term for this discrepancy is dramatic irony. It results when readers know more than one or more characters in a story know. This chapter is a grand display of irony, as a conventionally minded society assumes certain things about Meursault and his behavior that we know to be wrong. Still, we can grant that under ordinary circumstances their presumptions would be valid.
For reflection or discussion: Trace (a) the implied explanations the magistrate and lawyer impose on the events of part one, and (b) the degree to which these explanations distort how Meursault experienced those events. Camus is pursuing a persuasive agenda of getting us to share his viewpoint toward society. What is that viewpoint, as embodied in an incipient critique of society's misguided attempts to explain everything in conventional ways? In turn, how do you assess the magistrate and lawyer as they spin Meursault's actions?
Social Critique
We also need to take an initial foray into something that will become a major preoccupation of the novel by the time it ends---namely, the picture of the judicial system that Camus puts before us. I do not make any prejudgment about how individual readers will assess the court system of the novel. But I will make some preliminary points about it.
First, society obviously needs a system of prosecution, trial, and judgment as a prerequisite to civilization. Someone who commits murder needs to be arrested and imprisoned, and then he needs to be tried with as much data on the table as possible. In principle, then, as readers we respect figures of law like the magistrate and lawyer.
Second, though, we can hardly fail to be disturbed by much of what parades in front of us. As storyteller, Camus influences our responses simply by virtue of the details that he put into the story. The storyteller always controls what we see and don't see. The question that the magistrate finds most crucial (and to which he continually returns) is why Meursault waited between the first and second shots. An irrelevant detail has been allowed to take "center stage" in the mind of the examining magistrate, and as readers we are duly critical.
Along these lines, the lawyer and magistrate themselves betray a note of cynicism about the legal proceedings. For example, when Meursault offers the opinion that his behavior at his mother's funeral has no connection with the murder charge, the lawyer replies that this simply shows he has never had any dealings with the law. Late in the chapter we read that the magistrate seemed to have lost interest in Meursault's case.
For reflection or discussion: Almost from the start of this story, a double judgment arises within us---against Meursault and against his society. How do you respond to society as represented by the magistrate, lawyer, and larger social institution that we call "the law"?
Meursault Revisited
Every chapter I have covered thus far, including this one, winds its way to the ongoing characterization of Meursault as an absurdist hero. In fact, several moments in this chapter rank in memorability with Meursault asserting that "nothing had changed" with the death of his mother and telling Marie that they would get married if she was keen on it.
This chapter heightens the motif. When asked if he felt sadness on the day of his mother's funeral, Meursault claims that "the question struck me as an odd one" (Gilbert translation; Ward: "The question caught me by surprise"). When asked if he was sorry for the murder he had committed, Meursault replies that he "felt kind of annoyed" (Gilbert: "less regret than a kind of vexation"). And then there are the now-customary references to Meursault's inattentiveness due to the heat.
For reflection or discussion: Continue to view yourself as the observant companion of the protagonist. Whatever else Camus is saying in this novel, the most important aspect of that message is embodied in the protagonist. How do your understanding and assessment of the absurdist hero grow in this chapter?
The Case of the Crucifix-Toting Magistrate
The most unexpected and mysterious ingredient in this chapter is the major space allotted to the moment when the magistrate turns evangelist. Out of nowhere the magistrate pulls a crucifix out of his file cabinet, asserts that he believes in God, and proclaims the gospel of forgiveness in Christ exactly as a Christian believer would proclaim it. He then proceeds to ask Meursault if he believes in God and is exasperated when Meursault says that he does not believe.
The storyteller plants devices of disclosure to guide a reader in the direction of a desired response. In fact, the author's success in conveying the intellectual meaning of a work and persuading a reader to accept it as truthful depends on planting the right cues. I see nothing in chapter one that constitutes a device of disclosure in regard to the evangelistic magistrate. I do note, however, that at the end of the chapter Meursault records that "he didn't talk to me about God anymore, and I never saw him as worked up as he was that first day." The Gilbert translation renders it more vividly and with nuance: "He never mentioned God again or displayed any of the religious fervor I had found so embarrassing at our first interview."
Much depends on the degree of credibility that we personally accord to the magistrate. But not everything depends on that judgment. The magistrate's message accurately reflects Christian doctrine, regardless of how feel toward him. Equally, we are led to understand that rejecting Christian belief is part of the protagonist's identity.
For reflection or discussion: It is hard to know what to make of the Christian note thrust so conspicuously into this chapter. Since we are left on our own to interpret, I'm eager to observe in the comments section what you think. At the very least we need to say that Camus shows a correct understanding of the gospel of forgiveness in Christ. But the novel does not say what Camus intended with this placement of the gospel into his story at an unexpected point. What do you think Camus intended?
13 Comments
I found the evangelistic scene to ring false. It seems shallow or hollow. This may certainly be the way Camus viewed the process or had observed it in his own life. Perhaps it was his assumption of the process. I'm unsure. But it is not believable in some regards. It also is very believable in other regards. The magistrate seems bent on getting a response from Meursault. The magistrate does not seem bent on it being genuine as much as being spoken. This rings so true in altar call culture conversion where a moment of emotional response is considered a finish line in discipleship.
http://onceforalldelivered.blogspot.com/
Camus seems to have a desire to say that religion too – Christianity specifically – is an absurd, irrational, even “uncool” venture for mankind. The magistrate is portrayed as a fanatic, an annoyance, and an unstable sheep. Interestingly, all that the magistrate says regarding the gospel is correct and actually serves to (unexpectedly) show the absurdity of Meursault’s life. The magistrate correctly assesses the condition of the world, namely that without this belief in God, life would become meaningless. Again, Meursault says he is hot, which seems to spring up each time our hero starts to see his worldview confronting plain reason.
I would not say the crucifix is “out of nowhere,” because there is a steady buildup in the text. “I had never talked so much in my life,” Meursault says. The magistrate pauses, mentions God, then asks a question about Maman. The discussion then turns to the number of shots. Meursault firing more than once shot, it seems, was entirely unnecessary with regard to a simple goal of killing. But Meursault fires FIVE. This is too much for the magistrate, who then tries to convert Meursault. The magistrate gradually is exposed to Meursault’s ideas and, because Meursault is actually consistent with applying his view of the world, the magistrate must react, matching Meursault’s fervor (though the men’s fervor is entirely different in method of expression but not degree).
Sam, it does seem interesting to me that Camus knows exactly what the most credible obstacle in the absurdist's path is, namely Christ. Though the story takes place in North Africa, Islam is never mentioned. Though by nationality French, Rome is never mentioned. He is not going for "religion," he is going straight for Christ and leveling his weapon at just the right spot, the Savior. But people blinded by their sweat and maddened by the sun whose hands happen to be resting on a revolver, don't need the cross.
Here's my guess for now: Camus is subtly undermining the Christian worldview as he seeks to unpack the worldview he wants to put forth through Meursault.
As i read the exchange, I can't help but think the magistrate seems pretty ridiculous with the way he handles the spiritual conversation. I think Camus' intended us to feel that way about it. It really seems like the magistrate is forcing the whole conversation, giving a sense of insincerity. Ward translates that he "brandished" the crucifix, like someone would "brandish" a weapon and his voice "cracked" and he "waived it over his head". Furthermore, it's sad that after this exchange we learn that the magistrate "loses interest" in Meursault, implying he only was interested in trying to get the conversion. Once that seemed hopeless he stopped caring for him.
Camus comments that the Magistrate believes in all this and if he didn't his life would be meaningless. It gives the impression that the magistrate (and by extension Christians) believe in order to avoid feeling this way. I think Camus by the end is going to provide his own answer for how to deal with feeling meaningless and wants to kind of KO the reigning worldview.
So my impression is that Camus is belittling the Christian faith, or at least the way Christians handle their faith in order to make way in people's minds for the worldview he wants to set forth embodied by the protagonist.
Paul, I thought that exchange about meaninglessness very central as well. Finding meaning is not the reason for faith, but the result of faith. Christianity is at essence objective truth received subjectively for the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. In some ways, what Camus demonstrates is right, I think. A life without Christian faith would not necessarily be devoid of all meaning. Meursault has access to common grace (although he will not call it that) in prison. The sun still shines; there is air to breath, food to eat, and satisfying sleep. There will be interviews, pats on the back, friendly faces calling you Antichrist, and a mind to recall the good memories of the past. All this will suffice to keep Meursault going (though Camus is wrong to point to it as proof that Christ is irrelevant). As someone else mentioned, Dostoyevsky believed that those who didn't believe in life after death would find this life ultimately meaningless. However, objectively, all life has meaning. After we have drained the last drop of common grace in this life, our existence reveals an absolute, irrevocable, and eternal meaning in the life to come.
A few random observations, nothing profound here, needless to say......
1. Mersault shot someone yet it never dawned on him that he might need a lawyer. He seemed surprised and happy that the court would appoint him a lawyer. Further evidence of almost zero insight into reality.
2. The magistrate has snow white hair, the lawyer black hair.
The magistrate's office (later) is flooded in light. The lawyer wore a dark suit.
3. I found the the lawyer's focus on Mersualt's attitude at his mother's funeral to be a bit of a stretch. Just seemed too unbelievable. Camus' creation of a character that I find impossible to imagine has been a complaint of mine since the first installment.
5. Mersault: "All normal people desire the death of those they loved at some time". That's just bizarre.
And: "......I had a mind to assure him that I was just like everybody else; quite an ordinary person". Does Camus think so?
I think Mersault seems rather mentally ill.
When asked, on the record, if he loved his mother: "yes, like everybody else".
6. Camus seems to have an understanding of at least basic Christian doctrine, and actually fairly succinctly summarizes Christ's offer of salvation to sinners. I think that Camus respected the church at the end of his life. I need to research this further.
I wonder if Camus wants to believe at a deep level. I thought it interesting that Mersault, for the first time, appropriately recognizes absurdity when he feels alarmed by the magistrate and when he knows that he is, in fact, "the criminal". I wonder if the magistarte might represent Christ. I don't know if this might be, "in the light of Christ", a glimpse of reality. The use of light symbolism seems to intimate John's gospel.
When Mersault says he does not believe in God, the magistrate states "all men believe in God, even those who reject Him". I have to think that this is Camus speaking, and if so, it would reflect insight on his part. But then Camus has Mersault thinking that the magistrate's life would lose all meaning if he ever doubted God's existence. Is this the Freudian/ Hitchins cliche about belief in God being a crutch? Not sure what I make of all this. And the guy in the backgound typing the conversation certainly adds a surreal flavour to it all.
7. Mersault: "....but then I realised that I, too, came under that description [of a criminal]. Somehow it was an idea to which I never could get reconciled". Is this the truth of the doctrine of original sin that he cannot see in himself? Is this why he sees no need for a saviour? If so, I'd say that there is some dawning insight perhaps here for Mersault.
8. Mersualt does not feel regret for the murder, "only a kind of vexation". Again, that makes him seem mentally ill.
9. "Mr. Antichrist"........
Mersault says that he was exceedingly fond of the title.
Is this Camus' feeling about himself?
Sorry this was so long!
--Bill
Some interesting history:
1. From 'Library Journal' re. a book: "Albert Camus & the Minister"
http://www.amazon.com/Albert-Camus-Minister-Howard-Mumma/dp/1557252467
.......
"A half-century ago, the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus went to a Parisian church to hear an outstanding organist but returned on subsequent Sundays to hear the sermons of a visiting American minister. In the book's first half, the minister, Mumma, recollects his friendship with Camus and the philosopher's developing interest in Christianity. Mumma gives impressionistic, anecdotal accounts of Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as Camus's memories of Simone Weil. Most striking is Camus's requestDwhich Mumma deniedDfor a private re-baptism. Mumma offers the reader a first-person account of existentialism and a generic, mainstream Christian response. In the second half, Mumma offers touching vignettes from his life and ministry, concluding with reflections on life's purpose. While this book does not address with any depth or insight the intellectual issues it raises, it does offer an enjoyable account of the experiences of a generous individual.DSteve Young, Montclair State Univ., Clifton, NJ
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The reviews were very mixed, but did shed some info about Camus. For example he did study the Bible, and seemed to know it pretty well.
Some of the comments:
"..... the story as a whole is an excellent narrative of the existential struggle between the two extremes of Jean-Paul Sartre's thoughts and Mumma's Christianity, with Albert Camus' frustration with the universe straddling the chasm."
".....Albert Camus wrote his Master's thesis on "Christian Metaphysics and Neo-Platonism: Plotinus and Saint Augustine" under the supervision of a professor, Jean Grenier, who was something of an expert on Eastern religions"
"Mumma seems to have simply filed Camus away as an "existentialist" (a movement Camus didn't consider himself a part of and a term he despised)"
2. From "Camus, The Fall, and the Question of Faith"
By Jimmy Maher
http://maher.filfre.net/writings/camus.htm
"The Fall has the feeling of a deeply personal book. One senses somehow that the questions that torment Clamence are the questions that also torment the author. Certainly many commentators at the time of the book’s publication took it as direct description of Camus’ state of mind, circa 1956. Its note of questioning dissatisfaction led many to conclude that Camus was himself on the verge of embracing Christianity, not just intellectually but also spiritually. Speculation on this point is now rather pointless, of course. Camus may just as likely have been casting about for some new value system that could fill the void of traditional religion. Most likely, he had little idea of his own future. We certainly cannot know where Camus’ thoughts would eventually have taken him had he not died so soon after The Fall’s publication, but we do know that he was growing increasingly critical of the existential philosophies of Sartre and others."
"The Fall feels like a transitional work to this reader. Unfortunately, we never got to see where that transition would eventually lead Camus, for his life was cut short in the middle of his stream of thought. Having rejected Christianity, at least as a workable belief system for himself personally, very early in his career, and now having rejected Sartre’s brand of existential atheism, he seems to be searching for some third, better path. If he found it, he never had the chance to share it with us. This gives The Fall an unsettled feeling of incompletion. We are left in limbo, waiting for some sort of answer to the dilemmas it poses, an answer that will of course never arrive. There are no happy endings, and certainly no redemption. We have only some of the most difficult questions one can ask, accompanied by a protagonist who is the very definition of existential angst. Clamence is a martyr for the modern, smugly sophisticated, secular man embodied by thinkers like Sartre, and, yes, his sometimes friend and sometimes enemy Albert Camus himself."
I would enjoy hearing what Dr. Ryken has to say.
--Bill
Was reading the late Chuck Colson's 'Virtues and Vices' newsletter from today. They're using a quote from Camus on their letterhead.... ........ "A man without ethics is like a wild beast loosed upon the world".
Camus was unequivocally against religion, at least the Christian religion, as reflected in "L'Etranger" and "The Myth of Sisyphus," two parts of his Absurd Trilogy (the third being "Caligula." Belief in God, redemption and the afterlife, in Camus' thinking, is based on hope, and hope is merely the present deferrred. The Absurd Man, according to Camus, does not shy away from life's absurd difficulties, and confronts them head on, testing his or her own resources and ethics - revelling in the struggle that affirms their life. To passively accept God, and hope that things are better after death, is to give up on life, and accept someone else's life and ethics as superior to your own.
Hello, fellow readers!
I have three brief comments for your consideration:
1. Who is Meursault? As I was reading Part 2/Chapter 1, I was thinking of what we learned about Meursault from Part 1. Here’s a summary: he doesn’t grieve at his mother’s death (the funeral). He shows no moral objection to a man abusing a woman (Raymond) or a man abusing a dog (Salamano). He even participates in absolving the man of assaulting the woman! He is strangely unmoved by the love of a woman (Marie). And he shows no interest in career advancement or achievement (the Paris opportunity). Meursault has no clear, definable, moral system that governs his actions. So what DOES move him? I saw two things in Part 1: bodily appetites (hunger, thirst, sex) and external environmental conditions (heat, sunlight, sweat, fatigue, etc.). In other words, the only thing that moves Meursault is biology. I think that is why we find him so disturbing: his actions are motivated almost entirely by physical impulses, which is unpredictable for those who live by other systems.
2. Although the magistrate’s actions in this chapter are clearly over the top, the sentiments behind them did not strike me as unbelievable. When I was in graduate school, I worked for the juvenile court at a detention facility. As a “residential treatment counselor,” I had many, many conversations with young men, all convicted felons, about their lives, choices, futures, and the like. Some were pleasant and easy to talk with; others, those jaded by racism, poverty, broken families, years of being “in the system,” and other sad factors, were more challenging. I can remember on many occasions trying hard to help these young men to think deeply and carefully about their lives. I recalled my frustration as I read the magistrate’s interview with Meursault.
3. Camus’s Meursault is not playing the “game.” In this chapter, we see two major systems of rules: religion and law. Meursault won’t play by the rules of either one. He is playing by the rules of another game, a game of his own making. In this chapter, we see him in a new context, where his own rules are not accepted. It is, of course, in his best interests to conform to the rules of the games, or at least one of them, but he insists on playing by his own rules. And so, we see that the legal system judges him by its own standards. I think Camus is being highly symbolic here, almost allegorical; Meursault is a modern man caught in traditional systems that society as a whole accepts, to one degree or another. I don’t think we should be reading Meursault’s story so much for believability or plausibility. I think Camus is making a bigger point. What is perfectly acceptable to his “world” (this autonomous, passive, and lawless slavery to his own biological preferences) is totally unacceptable to the legal or religious world. Meursault doesn’t fit it; he’s a “stranger.” In this sense, Meursault, who is usually thought of as passive, is Camus’s hero, bravely, or perhaps stubbornly, defying and resisting the system.
"Meursault doesn’t fit it; he’s a 'stranger'" --- with those words of yours, a light came on for me. Perhaps it is because it was too obvious. Meursault is the sojourner, the pilgrim, the alien, of whom the world is not worthy. I get it.
A few thoughts"
1) Camus rejects the idea of God. Influenced by Nietzsche, who declared "God is dead," Camus seeks to place man in this world, now, stripped of the false promise of the hereafter. For Camus the present cannot be deferred for a life after death. And also for Camus, part of the absurdity of life is that if you believe in God, you must answer why this God allows so much evil and suffering? And there is no answer. The Magistrate is rather grotesque in the novel, as is the priest at the end, as they represent conventional morality - the God (or Gods) that Sisyphus is punished for denying, like Mersault.
2) Mersault is far from immoral. He does not accept conventional morality because he searches honestly within for beliefs, but in the absence of 100% sure answers, he opts for silence, rather than lying to himself or others. Hence his response to Marie that he does not love her - he isn't sure.
3) If you read the book closely, you should notice that Mersault had to give up his studies. Why? Most certainly it would have been to take care of his mother. One can infer that he has had also to take a lesser job than desired. He does mention that he never knew his father, and that he and mother rarely talked and had been distant for some year, despite living together (before she was put in the home in Marengo). So rather than being callous, Mersault perhaps is withdrawn, maybe beaten down by life, without hope - hope, the great panacea.
4) But he is a tragic hero in that he does not accept anyone's notion of morality, instead seeking his own. And indeed, logically, what does not crying at his mother's funeral have to do with accidentally killing an Arab, a man who flashed a knife at him under the blazing sun on a deserted beach? Or, for that matter, what connects sleeping with Marie two days after interring his mother? Nothing.
5) For those who see Mersault as a sensualist without any morals, one only needs to reread Camus' early essays, such as "Nuptials at Tipasa." The sun, the sea, flowers, the feel of a woman's body - all are momentary triumphs, concrete if temporary, sure benificences of life when so little else offers itself to us. God or gods are remote, hidden, and never show themselves. The splendors of nature and human contact are immediate, and cannot be denied. Mersault is not a slave to biological preferences - on the contrary. Marie is a gift - marriage, however, and love, are words invented by society, laden with conventional meanings, which Mersault does not understand, so therefore cannot accept.
I believe I am skeptical of the judicial system in the United States--- perhaps because I believe that justice is increasingly subjective. The Hollywood criminal can get off, while the "fanatic" might be jailed for hate crimes or picketing. Because the news media broadcasts the spectacular, this is likely not the case often. On the other side of the world in the country where we now live, a country indoctrinated with atheistic materialism for 60 years, the subjectivity ironically is much more pronounced, and above all, money and connections will speak so that true justice seems rarely served. The subjectivity of the magistrate is what Camus emphasizes as well. Meursault gets a magistrate who cares little about the criminal's status or wealth, but insists on repentance. When the magistrate sees impenitence, he pegs Meursault and seems to be carrying through with formalities having already determined the verdict in his heart.