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 an intense emotional context. The reader compares how Meursault acts to how we think he should. He seems unaffected and alienated as he goes to pay his respects at the retirement home where she lived. At one point during the vigil, he describes another woman crying although he has not cried himself: "Soon one of the women started crying... I thought she'd never stop... The woman kept on crying. It surprised me, because I didn't know who she was. I wished I didn't have to listen to her anymore" (Camus, 10). Meursault narrates the scenes without emotion, as if he were simply observing the events and not living them.
The only feeling Meursault makes clear, through dialogue and through his thoughts, is that he does not want to be judged or blamed for Maman's death. He repeats multiple times that the death is not his fault, and at the vigil has "the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me" (Camus, 3, 10). After he returns to his home in Algiers, he seems unaffected by his mother's death and even says so explicitly: "It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed" (Camus, 24). During these first few chapters we become accustomed to Meursault's way of being, and his lack of emotion in general. Maman's death is an important introduction to him as a character.
Maman's death affects the events that follow as well, as it comes up later on in the book and is an important part of the trial. The prosecutor makes distinct connections between Meursault's way of acting after his mother's death and the murder he committed, to the point where Meursault's lawyer claims "'Come now, is my client on trial for burying his mother or for killing a man?'" (Camus, 96). It is an important part of the book that the events following Meursault's mother's death are in part used to justify his own. The prosecution claims that only someone dangerous and unpredictable could act so strangely after his mother's death and kill a man without a clear motive.
It is telling how Meursault starts to think of his mother more only after he is sentenced to death. Alone in his cell, he says, "At times like this I remembered a story Maman used to tell me about my father" and "Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about" (Camus, 110, 113). For the first time, we see Meursault thinking about his mother in a caring, nostalgic way. This change of thought shows just how much he is affected by the results of the trial. During the last few lines of the book, she comes up yet again: "For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,'... so close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again" (Camus, 122). Here, we see how the effects of Maman's death continue throughout the novel, all the way to the final pages. At the end of his life, Meursault feels a strange closeness to his mother. In this way, The Stranger comes to an eerie full circle, as it opens with Maman's death and ends with Meursault's.
Work's cited: Camus, Albert. Translated by Matthew Ward. The Stranger. Vintage Books, 1988.
I think your post brings up a good point that even though Meursault is indifferent about his mother dying, he often remembers her, her stories, and what she would think of him. Overall I think you bring to light a good discussion point. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI think Meursault's remark that it would be disrespectful to cry about his mother's death is also very telling. Coming close to his own death allowed him to think about death more and he realized why he did not cry as a result of her death. At the begging of the book he could not explain it, but with introspection he was able to understand. Although, outsiders may find is lack of emotion to be alarming, from his perspective it makes total sense.
ReplyDeleteMeursault’s shows an unemotional response to his mother’s death, and yet still has vivid memories and knowledge on her. As the story progresses, the reflection on his own legal situation and what his mother did at the end of her life creates a weird parallel. Good connection between the mother and Meursault.
ReplyDeleteIn the courtroom, the fact that Meursault is essentially on trial more for his behavior at the funeral than for the act of shooting a man point-blank is made absurdly explicit when the prosecutor equates him with the "parricide" case that is happening after his: he is "morally culpable" of murdering his mother, simply because he did not behave in the socially conventional manner at her funeral. So his early oversensitivity to the impression that her death is "his fault" and he must "apologize" is weirdly confirmed and extended by the absurd court: Meursault IS aware that his way of being in the world sometimes leads to negative judgments from others, but the court extends this sense of guilt to preposterous degrees (accusing him of essentially murdering his mother, or being an "abyss threatening to swallow society").
ReplyDeleteYou make a good case for Meursault's perspective having changed from the beginning to the end of the book. It's interesting how he is only seen thinking of his mother fondly after he has received the death sentence, and it's certainly evidence for the case of the murder weighing on Meursault emotionally, at least a little bit. Good post!
ReplyDeleteI remember reading somewhere that the translation used "Maman" as opposed to translating it into "Mom" or "Mother" to help preserve the emotion that would otherwise be lost in translation. We perceive Meursault as emotionless, and I think this contrast really helped show the small yet significant emotion he still expressed. He may not have cried at her funeral, but I think his memories of her are enough for me to say he wasn't entirely the emotionless monster the court tried to paint him out to be (though he was definitely a bad person for other reasons). Your statement about the court using his mother's death to justify his was particularly notable to me, and I think it just further ties them together for me.
ReplyDeleteYour post does a good job of highlighting the role of Maman in The Stranger. Even though she doesn't have a single line in the novel, Maman is a more important character than she may seem. In the end, it's Mersault's indifference to his mother's death that gets him in trouble, more so than his actual act of killing the man. It's the fact that Mersault is unwilling to show grief or emotion that makes him inhuman, and therefore convicted. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't like the point of view that a lot of people came to that Meursault didn't care at all for his mom. I think that this post does a good job finding the nuance in his rocky relationship to his mom (parent-child relationships are known for being kind of tenuous at times, this isn't too strange to see), and understanding the ways that Meursault deals with the grief of his mom's death. The part of the novel where Meursault was in his cell thinking about his mom really struck me, and I'm glad someone decided to talk about that moment, because I think if we see any type of character growth from Meursault, it's in that scene. Unrelated but I like your description of the book coming full circle, starting with Maman's death and ending with Meursault's. Great post!
ReplyDeleteAMELIE! This is an amazing post. I find the shift in Meursault’s thoughts on the connection with his mother, especially when facing his mortality, quite heartbreaking. It’s as though his lack of reflection early on wasn’t due to apathy, but an inability—or refusal—to confront deeper emotions until stripped of everything. I also noticed the novel has a full circle effect almost, as it starts with his mother’s passing and ends with his death, and at the end leaves the reader with these “clarifying” ideas on life and death although the first ¾ even are mainly about Meursault’s impartial observations.
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