Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Who Is this guy?
Meursault is a very confused man. In circumstances that would normally cripple a normal member of society, he finds himself oddly disconnected, isolated. More than that, however, he expresses no wish to be otherwise, nor does he call specific attention to his detachment, he just expresses it naturally through his actions, thoughts, emotions. Meursault is the prime example of a man trapped in his head. I would connect this specific situation to my favorite movie, Garden State, wherein the main character also gets a short, punctuated call regarding the death of his mother. He remains stoic and composed through the funeral and for much of the movie, kept in his detachment by lithium that he has been proscribed for almost his entire life. This character, Largeman, is similar to Meursault in that he is detached from society, though they differ when it comes to their willingness to rejoin the world. Largeman has a reason for his displacement, and thus he stops taking the inhibiting drugs. Meursault, however, does not seem to call any attention to any outside reason for his detachment.
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I wouldn't say that the author is trapped in his own head, rather he is not telling the reader what is going on in the head. He is simply a narrator, not knowing what the characters (including himself as a character) is thinking.
ReplyDeletei would agree with you. he seems so distance from everything. nothing he ever does has any emotion to it. i wonder if we ever find out what he considers important. you write in such a cool way. i liked when your say "n circumstances that would normally cripple a normal member of society, he finds himself oddly disconnected, isolated." very cool :)
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