Thinking of Maman
"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday" (Camus, 3). The Stranger by Albert Camus plunges the reader into a disorienting story with these opening lines. Meursault, the main character, narrates the story of how he got involved in a crime, and sentenced the death penalty from his strange first-person perspective. From these very first opening lines, we get a glimpse of just how foreign this narration seems. In such a meaningful sentence the reader is shocked by where Meursault dedicates his attention. Not to his mother's death, but to the question of when it happened. The events surrounding Maman's death are significant in the novel for many reasons. They are the starting events of the book, as we become accustomed to Meursault's way of thinking, of acting, and of processing emotion in what should be...