The Outsider by Colin Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

but unfeelingly; it exhausted him because he had to sit up all night, but did not otherwise affect him. The next day he goes swimming and begins an affair with a girl. In half a page he outlines the development of the relation; they go to see a comic film, then return to his room and sleep together. In the morning, after she has gone: ‘ I slept till ten. Then I stayed in bed until noon, smoking cigarettes. ’ 3
    This is the atmosphere of Eliot ’ s ‘ Waste Land ’ :
    I read much of the night and go south in the winter.
    What surprises us, by comparison, is the lack of moral disapproval in Camus ’ s book; there is no suggestion that the author intends us to condemn Meursault as a futile idler.
    The unusual quality about Meursault is his honesty. The girl asks him to marry her and he promptly agrees:
    Then she asked me again if I loved her; I replied, much as before, that her question meant nothing or next to nothing, but I supposed I didn ’ t. 4
    This honesty springs out of indifference to issues of feeling; he does not attach importance to anything; why should he lie?
    Meursault becomes friendly with a pimp, anc 1 finds himself involved in a feud between the pimp and an Arab. A day spent lounging on the beach culminates in the shooting of the Arab by Meursault. It was self-defence, but the Arab was unarmed, and there were no witnesses. Meursault finds himself on trial for murder.
    And it is now that his strange qualities as an Outsider are against him. A man who has committed a murder should at least show some interest in what he has done; his best chance of acquittal lies in his weeping, protesting, showing himself overwhelmed by this terrible accident. But from the beginning, Meursault ’ s indifference disconcerts his questioners. They can only put it down to callousness. And then there was the affair of the funeral. Why was he so unaffected by his mother ’ s death? Didn ’ t he love her? Again his honesty is against him:
    I could say quite truthfully that I ’ d been fond of my mother, but that didn ’ t mean much.

 

     
     

    The magistrate is a humane and religious man who would be only too happy to find grounds for acquitting Meursault, for ‘ There is more joy over one sinner that repenteth. ... ’ With tears in his eyes, he shows Meursault a crucifix and exhorts him to repent. But Meursault looks on with mild surprise. All this is meaningless. It is so completely beside the point. Repent of what?
    Finally Meursault is tried. Now Camus no longer bothers to disguise the irony. Meursault, as innocent as Mr. Pickwick, hears the prosecutor summing up in a deeply moved voice:
    ‘ Gentlemen of the jury, I would have you note that, on the day after his mother ’ s funeral, that man was visiting a swimming pool, starting a liaison with a girl and going to see a comic film. That is all I wish to say. ’ 5
    That is all he needs to say, for Meursault is condemned to death.
    In his cell, the chaplain visits him, with more exhortations to repent. Suddenly, Meursault can stand the stupidity no longer; he seizes the priest by the collar and pours out his irritation:
    He was so cocksure, you see. Yet not one of his certainties was worth one strand of a woman ’ s hair.
    … Nothing, nothing had the least importance, and I knew quite well why … From the dark horizon of my future, a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing towards me … and on its way, that breeze had levelled out all the ideas people had tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I was then living through.
    … all alike would be condemned to die one day; his turn too would come like the others. And what difference did it make if, after being charged with murder, he were executed because he didn ’ t weep at his mother ’ s funeral, since it all came to the same thing in the end. ’ 6 [Italics mine.]
    His last reflections, as he falls asleep on the eve of his execution, bring him a sort of insight:
    With death so near,