The Stranger

On the outside other's cannot see where we have been. In that way we are all strangers to one another because if we don't know another's past we don't necessarily see the true person. We are products of our past, but Mersault is a complete stranger because he does not live from ambition to ambition as most people do. He lives by the philosophy that to live life to the fullest is simply to eat breathe and die. Seeing the world, in his eyes is living, so we never hear many of his memories we just must assume where he has been. When he does speak of the past he speaks of things his mother used to say, or Marie's dress, or the look of the sky. He does speak about Maman's death, which may be considered a big event in any other person's life, but he does not seem as if it changed him in any major way. Somehow his memories turned him into a person who enjoys the simple pleasures in life, and looking back on his life he wouldn't have changed anything, which is something I think we should all yearn to live for.