There is a clear pattern in the first part of Albert Camus’

In the first segment of Albert Camus' The Stranger, there is a simple theme to which the author frequently returns. It is a heat pattern. At the start of the book, the main character (only known as Meursault) buries his mother, but he seems to be more concerned with the hot weather outside. “The sky was now ablaze with fire, and the temperature was quickly heating up. “I sensed the first rays of heat lapping at my back, and my dark suit exacerbated the situation” (Camus 11). The sun has an effect on Camus' character's daily life: “We went down to the street and, because of my being rather under the weather and our having kept the blind down in my room, the glare of the morning sun hit me in the eyes like a clenched fist” (Camus 32). Finally, at the end of the first part the sun is what makes Meursault go for the thing he did, which was the killing: “The heat was beginning to scorch my cheeks; beads of sweat were gathering in my eyebrows. It was just the same sort of heat as at my mother’s funeral, and I had the same disagreeable sensations—especially in my forehead, where all the veins seemed to be bursting through the skin. I couldn’t stand it any longer, and took another step forward” (Camus 38). Besides these moments, there are a lot more when Meursault thinks about the sun up in the skies and about the terrible heat that it produces.

Meursault is probably the only character in the novel who likes looking in the sky. And since he lives in Africa, there is always the sun high up in the sky. This sun is relentless and it makes him think about it even when there are more important things to think about. But that is one of the points in the book. For Meursault there is no much difference between thoughts about heat and thoughts about his dead mother. The sun probably has even more impact on his life than anything else. So Meursault is walking alongside the hearse and some other people when he buries his mother. And then “Pérez seemed very far away now, almost hidden by the heat haze; then, abruptly, he disappeared altogether” (Camus 12). It seems like the heat consumed one of the people totally. It consumes Meursault’s attention for a while. “Sun’s pretty bad today, ain’t it?” (Camus 11) says someone as though he hears Meursault’s thoughts. This heat makes Meursault uncomfortable and makes him want to get done with all this as quickly as possible.

Meursault is deeply affected by the sun throughout the whole story. It seems that living in Africa he could have gotten used to it. But it always makes him sleepy and drowsy. “What with the heat and the noise from the engine, I felt half dazed” (Camus 18) and “with the combined warmth of our bodies and the sun, I felt myself dropping off to sleep” (Camus 34), and moreover “I wasn’t thinking of anything, as all that sunlight beating down on my bare head made me feel half asleep” (Camus 35). So Meursault spends all his days in this border state between dreams and reality.

After killing an Arab, Meursault tells in the court that it was the sun that made him pull the trigger. And of course, nobody believes him. Everybody thinks that it is impossible. But it is only because none of them read The Stranger. If only they did, they would know that “I was conscious only of the cymbals of the sun clashing on my skull, and, less distinctly, of the keen blade of light flashing up from the knife, scarring my eyelashes, and gouging into my eyeballs” (Camus 38). So in fact, the sun did pull the trigger through Meursault hands. The sun was planning this murder for a while now. It chose Meursault as a candidate for this horrible deed. Even as he was heading towards the man that would be dead in a minute he was thinking “All I had to do was to turn, walk away, and think no more about it. But the whole beach, pulsing with heat, was pressing on my back” (Camus 38). He was perfect for this role, because for him there is no much difference between pulling the trigger and not pulling it, being sentenced to death or not. He goes fluently with the flow of his life and all his actions are determined only by his own decisions, which are not affected by society’s conventions.

Albert Camus masterfully places mood and atmosphere descriptions throughout the first part of the novel. Most of those descriptions are influenced by the sun. The reader can practically feel the heat grow with the flow of the pages. By the end of the first chapter Meursault walks on sand that is red hot under the sun. And the final page is where all the tension releases into a few revolver shots that turn Meursault’s life upside down.











































Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Stranger. New York: Vintage Books, 1946. Print.