The Strange Stranger - Part 3

Meursault eventually ends up in jail for the murder that he had committed. In the beginning he doesn't care and again continues to act indifferent but as the time passes he realizes that things have changed for him. First he is called for interrogation where he is asked whether he wanted a lawyer and oddly enough he refuses to have one. Nonetheless he gets one and I bet that he was his lawyer's "nightmare client". Meursault refuses to cooperate with him and continues with his non-sense attitude. He shows up before the "Magistrate" for his first court session. After the session, he had spent nearly a year in prison waiting for his trial to come. During that time he got a lot of media attention and he became popular (as could be also seen by the number of people who later attended the court sessions). For the first time in the story he had this urge to cry because everyone was looking at him in such a mean way. So basically for the first time since the beginning of the story he actually felt something which was natural, humane, and that actually made sense. Nevertheless, after the testimony of many of his peers he is found guilty for the murder. In the end of chapter 4 in part 2, Meursault starts paying attention to the details again by telling us how the police was gentle to him, how the judge told him that he deserves to have his head cut in a public square in the name of France etc. It seems that after the verdict he shrinks again into his small world of pointless details because that is the only "place" where he feels safe.

The Strange Stranger - Part 2

Meursault's life starts to get more interesting (for the readers) in the following chapters. He is still the same old indifferent person, but somehow things start happening to him and as usually he doesn't hesitate to embrace them. The main theme of the following three chapters is Meursault getting in trouble. His buddy Raymond beats up his girlfriend and afterwards asks Meursault to tell the police that she had betrayed him and that her betrayal was the reason of the conflict. Our main character does that. Later on he actually shoots a person...once and then...four more times, just too punish him for ruining Meursault's day.


During the story he also acts weird towards Marie when she talks to him about their marriage. He tells her that he doesn't really care if they get married but that they could get married if she wanted to. He considers Marie as just a random woman who happened to be with him and that he would also get married with any other woman also. But Marie truly loves him. Meursault "feels" some marriage when him, Marie and Raymond go to Masson's and his wife's beach house but the feeling was only temporary. We also find out that he was forced to quit college and since then he didn't have any ambitions whatsoever because he believed that they didn't matter. Personally I think that quitting college made Meursault the way he is portrayed in the story. It depends on the person when it comes to handling difficult life situations. Meursault was one of them that probably dealt with it in the hard way.

The Strange Stranger

The first three chapters of "The Stranger" describe the life of a person who is random in a nonrandom way. His lifestyle consists of nothing. He doesn't plan for anything and does everything that shows up. He is a person who doesn't commit to anything and is apathetic towards everything that happens around him. His mother dies, he spends a night with a stranger woman, eats supper with also a stranger and hears a crazy story from him and yet again, he remains apathetic and random. He reminds me of Jack (The Narrator) in the movie "Fight Club". Doing nothing and everything without a reason. It almost looks like he is lost while seeking a meaning to life. I guess this is how it looks like, to follow a purposeless life, without feelings and emotions, almost like a robot who knows nothing more than to follow binary commands.

The Trans-Siberian Fantasy

During our first two classes we have read a long poem written by Blaise Cendrars. As you can tell by the title, my first impressions about this poem define it as a very good fantasy. Knowing Cendrars' character and his imaginary life full of lies and fabrications, my impressions get even stronger. He takes this trip which is supposedly from France to Russia (or vice-versa) by a train. Somehow, during that trip, the whole world and all worldwide cultures got involved even though he wasn’t passing through all of them (i.e. Mongolia). Even though this poem supposedly “travels” across countries, cultures, events, and people, I was able to draw a line between the poem and myself. The traveling poet makes the world look so small and reachable while imaginatively passing through various countries including Germany, China, Sweden, United States, Spain etc. I also get this sort of a “traveling effect”. When I’m in an airport, looking at the big screens which show various cities of different places, I get the feeling that none of those cities are far away and that all of them can be reached easily. Furthermore, the contrasts and the great mixture of different things also grabbed my attention. The poet tends to compare and contrast objects which have no relation between them whatsoever but nonetheless, he managed to make the poem attractive and mind-catching.