The Stranger and The Dog

This week marked the first week of our Lit Circle novels and I must say, I was quite interested in the book I chose. The Stranger actually held my interest throughout the sixty pages we had to read for this session and it went by relatively fast. One of the most surprising things about the actual novel was the relative simplicity involved with the writing, at least stylistically. Every sentence was very short and did not really have any real substance or descriptive factor. I later learned that this was to show the characteristic monotony of the main character, Meursault, but the fact that Camus, the author of the novel, chose to write like that is still surprising. This leads directly into another thing that was really interesting about the novel and that was the way that Meursault reacts to situations. He has absolutely no emotions. This was discussed in more depth in our actual literature circle discussions, but Meursault is an apathetic individual, and seems almost incapable of feelings. When his mother dies, he shrugs it off as if he has just witnessed the death of an ant. He does not cry or weep and eventually goes on to resume his daily activities as if nothing has happened. When his girlfriend Marie states that she loves him, he states that love does not mean anything and when she wants to marry him, he states that marriage too means nothing. Arguably the most important phenomena in life, that being love, and the biggest commitment one can make, that being marriage, are again shrugged off by Meursault. We only really see him reveal any emotion when he kills and Arab at the end of the first section, something that does not really show any promise for his future. His emotions come out when he kills, sounds rather foreboding, which coincides with the rather strange title of the novel, one that invokes an aura of mystery.
Another one of the characters that had me very confused was the presence of Salomano and his dog in the novel. Salomano is presented as the neighbor of Meursault and is an old man whose only companion is his dog. The two resemble each other in appearance as both have hunched necks and scabs all over their bodies, yet the man hates the dog and the dog is deathly afraid of the man. Originally, I wondered why in the world the man would be included in the novel, but it was clarified when the scene where the man lost his dog took place. The old man was actually weeping when the dog slipped its collar and ran away despite showing hate towards it. Salomano goes on to tell a story about how he bought the dog when his wife died to be his companion. The dog likely filled the void left behind by his wife’s death and now that the dog is gone, the void has reopened provoking tears. The situation with the old man and the dog also reveals one of the aspects of Camus’s philosophy, one that is present throughout the novel. The story goes along with the saying that you don’t appreciate things until they are gone. It also highlights the pettiness of man and the absurdity in the events that occur in one’s life.