In Albert Camus' book The Stranger, Meursault kills a character known as "the Arab" for no real reason at all. Meursault even acknowledges that he doesn't have to kill "the Arab"
"It struck me that all I had to do was to turn, walk away, and think no more about it."
When he does shoot "the Arab", he notes that,
"each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing."
All in all, killing "the Arab" seems like a bad idea. But strangely enough, no real explanation is given for why Meursault killed "the Arab".
What's going on here?
(note also how the translation is different. How does this change meaning in the novel?)
A
What does not work well is looking for motivation at the surface level of the text. This is due to Camus's narrative technique. The entire story is told from a first-person perspective, i.e. a type of perspective that, in French literature before The Stranger, had been used to allow introspection. But introspection is exactly what we don't get; instead we get a narrative that gives us roughly the same insight into Meursault as a third-person perspective, almost as if an outsider were observing Meursault; only it is Meursault himself telling that story. Several early critics have commented on this, for example Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot and Claude-Edmonde Magny.
For this reason, analysing Meursault like a character from a realist novel is a vain pursuit. Camus himself remarked in his notebooks (in a draft for a letter in response to a review of The Stranger), "Realism is a meaningless word (Madame Bovary and Demons are realist novels and they have nothing in common." ("Le réalisme est un mot vide de sens (Mme Bovary et Les Possédés sont des romans réalistes et ils n'ont rien en commun." Quoted in Bernard Pingaud: L'Étranger d'Albert Camus. Gallimard, 1992, page 187.)
As mentioned above, Meursault tells his story with a kind of outsider's objectivity. He is also presented as a character that refuses to lie and play by society's conventional rules. After his mother's death, he does not seem to be mourning: he is not interested in having his mother's coffin opened so he can take a last look at her, he smokes during the wake, even falls asleep, and he doesn't weep during the funeral. These are examples of not playing by the normal social rules: he does not want to feign grief when he doesn't feel any. His lawyer later tells him that this could be used against him during the murder trial and suggest that he might say that his insensitivity at the funeral was not real but the result of an attempt to control his emotions. Meursault immediately rejects the idea because it was "untrue". This illustrates his refusal to lie.
Later on, during the trial, the killing of the Arab becomes an issue of secondary importance compared to Meursault's insensitiveness. Witnesses are questioned about Meursault's character and about his behaviour during and after the funeral but not about what they know about the killing. Meursualt is accused of "morally killing" his own mother; during his closing speech, the prosecutor even claims Meursault is also guilty of killing his father. (In reality, the cause of his mother's death is not known but she was definitely not killed by Meursault, while his father died when he was still a small child.) The prosecution's closing speech appears to mention the killing of the Arab only briefly, adding that Meursault "knows the value of words", which is another allusion to Meursault's commitment to truth (though probably not from the prosecutor's point of view).
From this point of view, Meursault is put on trial for refusing to lie and not playing by society's conventional rules. However, a novel about a character that is prosecuted solely for this reason would be implausible. This is why society needs an excuse to put Meursault on trial, and by letting Meursault unintentionally kill an Arab, the novelist provides exactly that excuse.
B
Initially, there isn't much. The final words of Part I read this:
I wanted to hear the murmur of its water again, to escape from the sum and the effort and the women's tears, and to relax in the shade again. But when I got nearer, I saw that Raymond's Arab had come back. He was alone. He was lying on his back, with his hands behind his head ... As far as I was concerned, it was all settled and I'd gone there without even thinking about it. As soon as he saw me, he sat up lightly and put his hand in his pocket.
pg. 58-59
There was a bit of a defensive mood at this point in the story. You have to remember that Meursault had simply gone with his friends for a day on the beach. Two Arabs were seemingly following them. Prior to these paragraphs, these Arabs had already engaged in a bit of a fight with Meursault and his friends, with one of them having slashed his friend with a knife. Moving on... (emphasis mine)
I took a few steps towards the spring. The Arab didn't move. Even now, he was still some distance away... I waited. The sun was beginning to burn on my cheeks, and I felt drops of sweat gathering in my eyebrows. It was the same sun as on the day of my mother's funeral, and again it was my forehead that was hurting me most and all the veins were throbbing at once beneath the skin... I took a step, just one step forward. And this time, without sitting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it out towards me in the sun... All I could feel were the cymbals the sun was clashing against my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear still leaping up off the knife in front of me. It was like a red-hot blade gnawing at my eyelashes and gouging out my stinging eyes.
pg. 59-60
This passage is also interesting. Meursault was undoubtedly under the sun, and it was affecting him. The parallel between the sun and his mother's funeral is also somewhat significant. At his mother's funeral, he was largely alone and almost kept to himself. He also defied many societal standards related to his mother's funeral.
The passages in these pages offer that parallel. Meursault wants to keep the peace within him, and he doesn't want anyone around him. The presence of the Arab disturbed him. When the Arab drew his knife, it disturbed this peace, bringing about provoking actions:
... That was when everything shook... The sky seemed to be splitting from end to end and raining down sheets of flame. My whole being went tense and I tightened my grip on the gun. The trigger gave, I felt the underside of the polished butt and it was there, in that sharp but deafening noise, that it all started. I realized that I'd destroyed the balance of the day and the perfect silence of this beach where I'd been happy. And I fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank without leaving a mark. And it was like giving four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness.
pg. 60
These passages provide a direct narrative for what directly instigated the act. Meursault may not have been completely conscious of his act.
But what I find interesting is the last sentence. You see, this novel is largely about existentialism. Albert Camus, the author, was an existentialist. The murder came as a shock - here we are looking at the life of an absurd man. He doesn't necessarily follow social norms, he's not married... etc. Earlier in the chapter, he said:
When Raymond handed me his gun, the sun glinted off it... I realized at that point that you could either shoot or not shoot.
pg. 57
You can shoot or not shoot. It doesn't matter. If someone is murdered or not, the world doesn't care. The theme of existence is largely at play. Whatever happens, it doesn't matter.
No matter how you look at it, there is not a reasonable explanation for Meursault's actions. It conveys the theme of existentialism, as well as the title of the book overall - Mersualt is an outsider in the way that he defies the laws of society. You see this most notably in his trial, where he shows remorse, and is ultimately convicted not because he committed the murder, but because he doesn't live up to what society wishes.
https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/1176/why-does-meursault-kill-the-arab-in-the-stranger
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