While reading The Stranger, I struggled to accept that Meursault was truly an existentialist. To me, it seemed that Meursault was trying to be someone he was not. Each time he showed emotion, he tried to explain it away or take an action that would eliminate any reader’s thought that the world had affected on him.
A great example of this was when he had dinner at Celeste's and the "robot woman" sat down and had dinner with him (p 43-44). Meursault showed obvious interest in her as he was so intrigued with her mannerisms that he followed her out the door for bit. Once he lost sight of her, he said that he soon forgot her. I feel that he was shocked that he had paid her that much attention and was now trying to cover up how much she had affected him with an act of indifference.
I was unsure of the validity of my argument until the end of the book when I read how Meursault stated how he wanted a large crowd of people to come to cheer at his execution. He wanted people to acknowledge his indifference to the world. If Meursault who truly individualistic, wouldn't he be indifferent as to whether or not people realized how he lived his life? If he were a true a existentialist, wouldn't he have been happy to accept and receive his death with out wishing for people to react to it?
In my eyes, Meursault is the least existential person in the book because he was a hypocrite. He obviously lived his life trying to be something he was not. If the point of a existential life is living individualistically and creating your own meeting, he failed miserably.
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