"The Stranger" 2nd thoughts

My current reaction now to the book "The Stranger" are confusion and belief. Meursault, a strange main character where in the beginning is considered heartless and emotionless now shows signs of feeling and limitation. In the beginning of the book, I felt meursaults reaction to the world and to other others were careless and meaningless because of how he described the type of situations he was in. For example, when he told us about when he found out his mother died, he nonchalantly grieved about and went off to thank it because it gave him days off from work and his obsession with avoiding bright lights. This gave me the impression that Meursault was a dark character and in order for me to connect with myself, I would have to detach myself from reality. Detachment is a big theme in this story and I believe the book's name "The Stranger" exemplifies the meaning because strangers are people you usually do not associate with, and therefore. one could categorize them as detached from society.


Recently in the book, Meursault commits a murderous crime and is sent to jail. Here, meursault feels limitation and is opened to expression of feelings. I say this because before, Meursault freely thought about whatever he was doing or freely observed the things that surrounded him. But in Jail, it's a whole different story. In jail, he is not able to access the freedom he is so use to and I feel that this punishment of not easily accessing this detached freedom, unlocks his being of expressing feelings.

There is one scene in the book where Meursault is confronted by a priest and the priest acknowledges his dark detached feelings and preaches to him until Meursault feels uncomfortable. "...no man was so guilty that god would not forgive him, but in order for that to happen a man must repent and in so doing become like a child whose heart is open and ready to embrace all." says the Priest and Meursault reacts with how "..hard [it was] to follow his reasoning...and also because he was scaring me a little." I think this scene explains how Meursault could no longer express himself as detached and careless because fear was in play, and being afraid is a feeling that in this case was unlocked by having Meursault open up even if it was a little bit.

My last questions for this book is basically, what is going to happen at the end? What is Meursault going to do with how confused and afraid he is? What is Meursault's next move? This book is a very good read because prediction is almost impossible which has kept me intact with this book and I am not a big fan of reading.