Stranger Theme Card

Quotes:
“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”
“She was right. There was no way out.”
“I told her that it didn’t mean anything, but that I didn’t think so.”
“I said that people never change their lives...”
“Do you want my life to be meaningless?”

Vehicles:
-Conflict
-Allusion
-Irony
-Setting

Conflicts:
-Meursault vs. Himself
-Meursault vs. Society
-Raymond vs. the Arab

Subjects:
-Physical world
-Death and life
-Indifference

Themes:
-What ties a man to the earth is not his consciousness of physical stimuli, but the emotion that stimuli creates, whether in the man himself or those who surround him.
-Extreme alienation from society results in the ability to reflect on one's self, yet also receives reproving views from society.

Plot: Meursault, a man who cares about hardly anything, is asked to write a hate letter to his neighbor’s mistress. This stirs up trouble, and Meursault ends up murdering an Arab. This lands him in jail, and forces him to contemplate the importance of his own life.

Title: “The Stranger” refers to Meursault’s position as an outcast, and the situation his indifference has left him in. No one in the story is able to understand him or his actions, and this isolates him from the rest of society.

Major Characters:
-Meursault
-Marie
-Raymond
-The Chaplain
-Magistrate
-Tome Perez
-Meursault’s mother