Today was the first day I actually rode my new "city" bike, a Schwinn Sprint, in the city. It's incredibly cute, but oh my dear goodness, what a pain to ride. If pain equals success, I think riding this thing will turn me into a champion.
In other news, I am going to submit my paper on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to a conference in Texas. I'll let you know.
Chapter Two
Chapter two opens with Mersault having returned home from his mother's funeral. Is the novel therefore primarily about grief? Or is Camus simply using grief as an emotion or a state of being within which the reader expects a greater show of emotion from Mersualt? No matter what, the loss of the mother will affect the tone of the novel. In the introduction, Matthew Ward declares that the opening line of Chapter one is a "sacred cow" of French literature in English translation. Ward keeps his comments limited to translation, but I can't help wondering if the intention of the first sentence important also in the sense that it is a demand for all of our expectations about grief and loss to be pulled up the front lines of the battlefield that is reading.
I have thought of different categories in which to divide the contents of the novel. There are:
1. Mersualt's daily actions and mundane activities
2. Goings on outside of Mersault, or, things he can't control, things he experiences
3. Ceremonies or activities in which he feels he must act or say things out of an obligation to social expectations
4. Mersault's random ideas, thoughts
In line with Stanley Fish's ideas about reader response, I think also present are the readers' expectations and reactions, in between the lines and all that.
So, to begin the novel, Camus presents the death of the mother. This has a lot of meaning, because it falls under daily activities, things M can't control, and then her death begets ceremonies, ideas, and most important, is a highly reactive topic that dives headlong into existence.
Chapter two investigates Mersualt's sexuality a bit. The style of writing is very mechanical, with each sentence advancing the plot forward like clockwork. But there are bits where we discover a little about Mersault's personality. He has some pretty interesting ideas about his boss. He thinks his boss was annoyed about his asking for vacation time for his mother's funeral because he'd "be getting four days vacation that way, including Sunday, and he couldn't have been happy about that." So his boss was jealous? This seems really odd, because it suggests his boss was so indifferent about Mersault's mother's death, so devoid of compassion, that he let his annoyance and jealously come through in his dealings with Mersault. I think that whatever reaction the boss had to the request for time off, it wasn't annoyance, or that if it was, it was annoyance at the discomfort aroused by awkwardness associated with death. Maybe Mersualt cannot even recognize compassion? Does he mistake it for annoyance?
His interaction with Marie is more personable. Yet, the only time he really feels anything is when she recognizes that he's in mourning, and then he feels defensive, wanting to say, "it wasn't my fault." He admits, "you always feel a little guilty." Who always feels guilty? People? Has Mersault lost a mother previous to this one? Is guilt just a common emotion to him?
Also, he tells Marie that Maman died "yesterday," when in fact she had died maybe two or three days before. This adds to my theory that his mother isn't "really" dead until the ceremony completes it.
In chapter two we also learn that Mersault used to live with his mother, but since her removal to the old folk's home, he has moved into one room, and has "let the rest go." Does this mean that he has let the rest out to rent, or simply abandoned the extra space? Has he "let go" of the idea of mother? He also collects advertisements, and tells us when he washes his hands. This seems to be either in accordance with an already popular stereotype of, or creates, the portrait of a sociopath. I mean, he sits and looks out of the window for five hours, right? Watching people with M is tiring. We get tired of Sunday with him, not in the least because he sees people and really has no feelings about them. It's only as he's going to bed that he senses his feelings, well, one feeling, really, and it's apathetic, "Maman was buried now...nothing had changed." I don't think this feeling, or lack thereof, is really all that shocking. It's all of the other things that he doesn't feel, like sadness, or anger, that make this disturbing. It's not like M has feelings that he is trying to escape, or shove down. He simply doesn't have them. He even almost seems to wait to have them, and then doesn't. The only one he acknowledges in this chapter is guilt. Now, that is odd, because you think that if he were a sociopath, he wouldn't have any remorse, or wouldn't acknowledge it if he did.
I also don't know why Mersault dislikes Sundays. If he doesn't desire companionship, why does he stare out of the window all day? Acknowledge the social groups he sees? He says that several girls wave to him...hmmmmm. I wonder if he is only social enough to fulfill his sexual desire, and has no other contact with people? He doesn't seem to like people asking him questions. It's kind of becoming clear that relationships are kind of troubling to M. His mother's presence in his life was awkward enough that the had her live away from him, and then her absence was also uncomfortable, but only physically; Marie seems to be a relief from loneliness, but she also appears to emote too much -- she's always laughing, and seems "very surprised." Her enjoyment of life gives her an almost childlike and innocent appearance, especially compared to Mersault's stoicism and isolation.
There is a relatable truth to Mersault's life and ideas. Of course the actions are normal, but when the constant barrage of ideas, thoughts, and emotions, the cacaophony that seems to plague humans, are removed from the narrative, it seems like so much of Mersault's humanity is lost. It's like Camus is employing an strategy opposite of stream of consciousness. I mean, what would we think of Dewy Dell if we didn't have her thoughts? Yet, there would still be her dialogue to give us access to her emotions. Mersault is silent most of the time. There's so much nothingness in this novel. The reader brings all of the emotional and mental chaos to the novel. Plus, we still haven't gotten a face.
There's more I want to talk about -- especially about gender. Next time.
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