Fallon’s 20th Century Novel Blog

  When Albert Camus wrote the Stranger , he was actively working with the French resistance against the Nazis. I need to reconcile his completely apathetic protagonist with a deeply passionate, and active agenda of his own. So, what about Meursault, his worldview, and his experience in the book can be framed as a cautionary tale about passivity? A call to action? We don’t know what Meursault’s emotional state was before his mother died, but I assume that he was capable of expressing and recognizing emotions. I believe this because at the end of the book, he has that outburst at the priest trying to convert him. After violently shaking and screaming at this man, Meursault feels “as if that blind rage had washed me clean” (122). Suddenly, he knows exactly what he is feeling! He is taking actions that correlate with those emotions! I believe this capability didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. Meursault had this capability at some other point in his life, for many years. Then, I theoriz...

Is Brett a bad person? I just can’t wrap my head around her actions in this book, and how they are so woven into the emotional realities of all the other characters! Brett, on several occasions, laments feeling like a “bitch.” I take this to mean she recognizes the discomfort and pain she can create in the people around her, and scorns herself for continuing on the same path. What is best for Brett-- sort of fluttering freely from man to man-- is inherently harmful to any of these partners she might take. I think that is her main conflict: people expect her to do something, and become emotionally invested in that reality. But then she does something completely different. Ouch. So what should Brett do? Is she meant to just give up any shot at personal fulfillment because these men expect her to settle down? Or follow her fluttery heart and leave these poor dudes alone and confused?  A pattern is established in the book that Brett comes around and Jake drops his own life to cater to ...