Since its publication in 1942, Gamu's "The Stranger" has become famous in one fell swoop and caused a huge sensation in France and around the world. Gamu is regarded by critics as an immortal star in the French literary world, as famous as Sartre, and "The Stranger" has become one of the classics of modern Western absurdist literature.
Absurdity is embodied in literary works as the nothingness of life, the loss of interpersonal relationships, personal alienation, etc. Absurd works reflect different aesthetic tastes, and Gamu's greatest contribution is to make absurdity more concrete. Therefore, "The Outsider" has achieved such a strong response in society because Gamu has shaped this sense of absurdity into A concrete character - Meursault.
My initial feeling about the character Meursault was how could there be a person so indifferent to the people around him in life.
The first sentence at the beginning of the novel is "Today, my mother left. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know." It is slightly depressing and surprising when read, setting the cold and plain tone of the entire novel. . It stands to reason that the mother should be the closest person in the world. Her mother passed away, but her son Meursault didn't know it at all. I haven't visited my mother in a nursing home in the past year because a trip would ruin the weekend and I was too lazy to buy a ticket to catch the bus. After his mother died, Meursault came to the room where his mother's coffin was placed. He carefully observed every corner of the room, including the white walls, transparent windows, and even the screws on the coffin. He was not interested in his mother's appearance, and even stopped the concierge from opening the coffin lid to show him. While he was keeping vigil for his mother, he smoked, slept, drank milk and coffee, and felt extremely bored. Just like his mother's death had nothing to do with him, it was cold and heartless. I didn’t cry or feel sad at my mother’s funeral. Instead, I was filled with joy when I thought that the funeral was over and I could go home and sleep for 12 hours. And the next day I went swimming, watched a comedy movie with my girlfriend, and had sex at my residence.
Meursault's principles of life are just like his mantra, no matter what, it doesn't matter, it doesn't make sense... His girlfriend asked Meursault if he loves her? It makes no sense for him to say such things, he definitely doesn’t love me! The girlfriend then asked Meursault if he would marry her? He said it doesn't matter whether we get married or not, if you want, we will get married.
Meursault's neighbor Lemon is a gangster and asks Meursault to help him write a letter to humiliate his ex-girlfriend. Lemon happily asks him if he wants to be friends with him, and he says he can do it or not.
The boss felt that Meursault was still young and wanted to promote him, so he transferred him to the Paris office to be responsible for marketing business. Meursault said that this is not necessary. It is the same wherever you go, and your life is similar. It will never change your life anyway.
Meursault is such a person, he likes to say casual, anything is fine. Without strong love and hate, being silent about vital interests, and having no clear view of right and wrong, everything is insignificant to him. He completely separated himself from society and interpersonal relationships, as if he was a cold-eyed bystander of his body, exuding a depressing and cold aura.
However, it is precisely such a person who seems to have no self that is the most self-conscious. It is this person who seems to care the least about the world, who knows best about the nature of the world. In fact, he is not an insensitive person. He is very sensitive to nature and has strong feelings. He and his colleague Emmanuel ran after the truck to find out what was causing the splattering of the truck's sprocket and the crackling of the internal combustion engine. He drank wine and coffee at Celeste's hotel, walked home along the pier, looked at the green sky, and felt a sense of happiness and ease. Later, he accidentally killed an Arab. When he was tried in court, he even forgot the speech of his defense lawyer, but he still remembered hearing the sound of the ice seller blowing his trumpet, and recalled the neighborhood he loved and the evening hours. sky. How could someone with such sensibilities be so numb to the world?
Meursault is not without emotion or a cold-blooded animal. Instead, he completely follows the most authentic traces of emotion.
Meursault did not want his mother to die. In fact, he loved his mother deeply. After his mother died, he often suddenly thought of her. When he saw a story in the newspaper, he remembered what his mother said, "You should not cheat in life." After losing his freedom in prison, he remembered what his mother often said, "In the end, people can get used to anything." He and her mother share the same philosophy of life. So he knew that his mother was liberated when she died, so he didn't need to be sad about it. No one had the right to cry for him. Spiritually, he is very close to his mother.
Meursault in Gamu's works is very similar to the ancient Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi sang after his wife died. Others were puzzled, but Zhuangzi said that the cycle of life and death of a person is just like the four seasons of the year. Now she Lying quietly between heaven and earth, it is just a link in the transformation of life and death, but I am crying on the sidelines. Doesn't it mean that I don't understand the principle of life? Many times we only see their unconventional behaviors, but we do not get a glimpse of their true thoughts and unique inner world.
Meursault was once very motivated and had great ambitions in college, but after dropping out, he began to feel that none of this was important, so he rejected his boss's suggestion to go to Paris.
Meursault made friends like Raymond because Raymond approached him enthusiastically and proactively. Meursault's easy-going personality had no resistance to this kind of non-oppressive friend. It was not that Meursault did not want to get married. Later, when he saw Masson and her wife living happily in a cabin by the sea, he came up with the idea of ??getting married for the first time in his life.
Meursault's thoughts are like rootless weeds, without any roots, and his heart is empty and lonely. He never expects anything from the other party, nor does he deliberately cater to the public, even if he says something against his will. He is a stickler for the meaninglessness of life. All kinds of life are the same to him. He is indifferent to the hopes, beliefs, and ideals that most people rely on for their existence. He felt that he would never be able to change his life anyway.
Meursault said, "You should never act falsely in life." This is his philosophy of life and the source of his tragedy.
The first half of the book focuses on Meursault's strong self-awareness from the death of his mother. The second half of the book focuses on Meursault's accidental killing of an Arab, which makes Meursault completely It has been pushed into the collective criticism of social consciousness, intensifying the conflict between personal consciousness and social consciousness. This is also the absurdity of "The Outsider". The court trial did not pay attention to the objective facts at all. Meursault fired one shot at the Arab and then four more shots. This constituted a crime in law, but in the court trial Instead, they bypassed the matter. Leaving the defendant Meursault completely aside from the fact that he did not cry at his mother's funeral a few months ago, he is indifferent. To demonstrate the impurity of the defendant's character and morality, he accused Meursault of burying his mother with a murderer's heart, sentenced him to death in the moral trial, and sent Meursault to the guillotine. As Meursault's defense lawyer said, everything about this trial was true, but nothing was true!
For Meursault's indifferent personality, he is unwilling to defend himself or lie. He feels it is unnecessary. He conforms to what people think of him without asserting himself. During the court trial, Meursault was deeply puzzled and bored by the judge's accusations, but he still chose not to explain like an outsider. With no involvement from his defendants in the case, his fate was determined only by others.
The final climax of the book is the dialogue between Meursault and the priest in the small cell. This part is the transition from the absurd trial in the court to Meursault's insistence on objective truth and the priest's master and apprentice persuading him. Believing in God, Meursault did not surrender completely as before, but resisted fiercely. It was inevitable that Meursault would be executed for betrayal, but in this spiritual duel with the priest, Meursault won.
Gamu created "The Outsider" in the context of World War II. The image of Meursault caused widespread controversy in the post-war capitalist society. People after the war Falling into a confused, confused mood. The end of the war did not take away the boundless shadow it cast. The image of Meursault is just a microcosm of contemporary French youth.
They are anxious about human survival, but they view the world with a super-rational attitude. As Meursault said, nothing is important, not the death of others, nor the love of mother, because one day, everyone will be executed for rebellion without exception, and no one will be spared. But when he died, he gained a sense of happiness that transcended the earthly world. He opened his heart to this indifferent and lingering world, and experienced that this world was so loving and harmonious. He felt that he was happy before, and he is happy now.
This year, low desires have appeared in East Asia. There is a certain similarity in nature between small luck, mourning culture and the emptiness expressed in "The Outsider". A few years ago, there was a popular Japanese movie "Little Forest". The heroine Ichiko in the movie once went to Tokyo to make a living, but she was unable to adapt to the fast pace of the city and eventually returned to her hometown, which is far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Impetuous, she integrates her love for her hometown into the cooking of delicious food, relying on a pair of hard-working hands to manage a small but comfortable life without competing with the world. Ichiko and Meursault seem to be indifferent to this fast-moving world, but they also express their affinity for this world through the things they experience personally.
I think there is a little Meursault living in everyone's heart, but the part of Meursault that exists in the mind may not be that big, but that small part will often pop up and tell us , be yourself. I think back to when I was in high school. I was in a key class and the high-intensity learning atmosphere made me eager to jump out of the suffocating wall and think about why I had to study so hard. I can't find myself in the ocean of knowledge. Gradually, I began to retreat to the edge, exhibiting behaviors that many teachers considered rebellious. In class, I didn't listen to the teacher's lectures. I stood in front of me with stacks of books and sat in the last row to study by myself. In the eyes of my classmates, I am withdrawn and like a dark wind. I would often run behind a big rock in a remote dormitory at night with a desk lamp to think about the meaning of study and the meaning of life.
I excluded all things and people and locked myself in a dark corner, so that when I entered college and had to introduce myself, I said that I felt like a curly hair. It felt like a force was trying to straighten me out.
No more, I didn’t introduce my name, I didn’t introduce my hobbies...
Now I think back to that lonely time. I wore out-of-place clothes and transformed the bed sheets and quilt covers into weird shapes. Shape doesn’t care about anyone’s evaluation or opinion of me. I wrote the philosophy of life in my diary and shared the subject of the impermanence of life in class. Yes, at that time I lived like a God who had fallen into the world. I had seen through the world, but I had lost my original love for it. I don’t like to communicate with my classmates, I don’t like to join clubs, and I don’t like to be anywhere with people. I isolated myself from many people and things in this world. At that time, I thought it was myself.
Some time ago, Cai Kangyong shared a little insight on Qiweishuo. He said that when many people signed autographs for him, the three words that signed the most were "Be yourself." After he wrote it too many times, he thought that when many people talk about being oneself, few people can answer what it means to be oneself. It seems that others are hell. Whether they are family members, lovers, classmates or colleagues, others can easily cause pressure and trouble to us. So when I write down the words "be yourself", I seem to feel free and get rid of others. . But now he has deeply realized that one thing is that you can't be yourself without others. When you draw a circle on the paper and want to draw your own circle, the moment you succeed, It must have both the inside and the outside of the circle.
I suddenly realized that seeing through the truth in this world is not the whole of life. If we think those truths are everything, shouldn’t we be frustrated to death by the cold truth? What are we going to do with the rest of our lives? Memorize the truth every day! And even if we don’t see everything until the last second before death, we can’t completely see through everything. The see-through we think is just a part of us. If we can’t see through everything, then we have to follow the current life every second. It is the best way to live a life that flows through various opportunities. Find what you want to express, it should not be vague, it should be a concrete presentation, just like Shizi in "Little Forest", she saw through the fast pace of the city, she returned to her hometown, she put The love for hometown is integrated into the cooking of food, which has won a lot of love.
If you are always looking for the meaning of life, you will never live. Therefore, on the basis of seeing the world through and staying true to yourself, you must be able to complement each other with others.
You must also find your inner belongings and find something worthwhile to be crazy about, so that you can love the world better!
After 6 years, I returned to the stone in high school. Now I really want to say, I love this world so much!