After a few negative reviews of center alignment, I'm trying justified.
Something I grapple with often in making moral judgement on various situations is intentions (I think I might have blogged about it last semester, too). Should someone's actions be understood in the context of their internal feelings, or is one's external impact on the world the only thing that matters? Or something in between?
In day-to-day life, our ability to understand other people's thoughts is extremely limited. Because of this limitation, in the "real world," we are urged from a young age to try and "see things from others' point of view" and "understand where they're coming from" and that "it's the thought that counts." To be a nice person is to consider others' motivations and internal workings.
But in literature, we typically have the privilege of an intimate understanding of the gears grinding in one or more character's heads. In The Stranger, we are buried deeply inside Meursalt's conciousness -- or lack thereof. And we find that motivations are quite important when we dissect the actions of a character.
Handily, Meusalt really is only motivated by one thing, indifference (which one could argue isn't a motivation at all, but whatever). We see all of his actions through the lens of his indifference. A good example is the letter to Raymond's girlfriend. Ordinarily, if we as outside observers were to watch somebody help Raymond "punish" a supposedly cheating girlfriend, perpetrating an action that ultimately leads to the woman in question being beaten, we would react horribly. But are we inclined to let Mersault slightly off the hook because we know that he wasn't fully behind the principle of hurting her, he was just going with the flow?
Or similarly, the shooting. The way in which it is written makes the murder -- athough the question was raised in class, can it be called "murder" without intent? -- seem much less dramatic than it would be to an outsider. Does his apathy cast a shadow of a doubt on whether or not he perpetrated the crime. I'm inclined to say "no," but the trial scenes disagree with me. Not on the issue of the actual act of killing -- as we've mentioned, the prosecutor doesn't really bother to focus on that --, but it criticizes Mersault for some of the outward manifestations of his indifferent attitude.
It seems that Camus is highlighting the importance of motivation. However, at the same time, he's also painting a picture of the impossibility of neutrality (with Mersault getting pulled into Raymond's side of the conflict), suggesting that, ultimately, it doesn't matter how you felt, it only matters what you do. A bit of a disjointed post, but hopefully the clean look of the justified font will ease the distressing lack of flow.
