The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [321]
Meursault is a young man in Algeria who has just received news of the death of his mother in an old people's home. In accordance with convention, he takes time off work to go to the funeral, but when he arrives at the home he shows little interest. He smokes in the room where the coffin is lying; gets irritated when some of her friends begin to cry; and when they process to the cemetery in scorching sun, he is much more worried about the heat than his mother's death. He then catches the bus home and looks forward to a long sleep. The next day on the beach he meets Marie, a girl to whom he is sexually attracted. He suggests they should go to the cinema that evening and she is surprised to hear it is only a day since he lost his mother. After the film, a comedy, she stays the night, but leaves early the next morning. The following weekend they spend another night together, and when Marie asks him whether he loves her, he replies `No'. She later asks him whether he would marry her, to which he says that he will if she wants it, but that he still does not love her. Shortly afterwards, Meursault is on the beach with Marie and two friends, Raymond and Masson, who have been in a fight with some Arabs. Later Raymond goes looking for the Arabs, and Meursault persuades him to hand over a gun he is carrying. One Arab comes at them with a knife, which gleams in the sun, dazzling Meursault, who impulsively shoots him. Afer a pause, he then fires four more shots into the Arab's body.
Arrested for murder, Meursault is given a lawyer, although he says this will not be necessary. When the lawyer tries to persuade him to plead in mitigation that he has been upset by his mother's death, he dismisses the suggestion, but feels too lazy to explain why. The magistrate produces a crucifix and invites Meursault to repent of his crime, so that God will forgive him. Meursault finds such an idea contemptible. He does not believe in God. He is not sorry for his crime, just annoyed about it. Over the next 11 months, while waiting for his trial, he enjoys sparring with the magistrate, who calls him `Monsieur Antichrist, and gradually gets used to prison life, even to being deprived of cigarettes and sex (Marie visits him once, but tells him she will not be allowed to come again, because they are not married).
When the trial begins, Meursault is surprised by how many people have turned up. He listens with a sense of bored detachment to the final summing up by the prosecutor, who makes much of his heartlessness over his mother's death and portrays him as a soulless monster. His own lawyer is unimpressive, and Meursault finds the trial depressingly pointless, wishing he could go to sleep. The jury finds him guilty, and sentences him to the guillotine. Waiting in the condemned cell, he three times refuses to talk to the chaplain, explaining that there is no point, since he does not believe in God or any life after death. When the chaplain persists, Meursault becomes angry, saying that it is not an afterlife he wants, but one where he could remember his present one. He says it is the chaplain himself who is dead inside, waiting for his non-existent afterlife. He, Meursault, is the one who has been right all along, living his own life in his own way. No one else's life, death or love is of any concern to him. He falls asleep and wakes up to hear sirens announcing that his execution is imminent. He thinks of his mother, and that no one had any right to cry over her. He feels comfort in the indifference of the world, although he finally hopes that a crowd of people who hate him might turn up to watch him face the guillotine, because then he would feel less alone.
Apart from this final flicker of weakness, Meursault remains cocooned in his egocentric defiance to the end. He has never deliberately set out to do anything wicked, like, say, Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov. But throughout the story he has shown himself to be totally dead to any normal human feelings, whether towards his mother and his girlfriend, or to