To what extent do the authors of The Outsider and The Catcherin the Rye suggest that society pressures individuals to fit in and conform to society's mores?

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PES ENGLISH STUDIES 2003

CRITICAL ESSAY

To what extent do the authors of The Outsider and The Catcher in the Rye suggest that society pressures individuals to fit in and conform to society’s mores?

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Albert Camus in The Outsider and J.D Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye suggest that society pressures individuals to fit in and conform to its mores. Salinger chooses to narrate his novel in the form of a bildungsroman, a rights of passage novel that depicts his protagonist, Holden’s, transition from adolescence to adulthood. In contrast, Camus writes his novel in order to record the events leading up to, and the last days before, the execution of his main character, Meursault. Through the employment of settings, characterisation and endings, both authors imply that society’s pressure on the individual to fit in plays a major part in both of these climaxes.

The importance of setting is established in both texts to impart the idea that society pressures individuals to fit in and conform to its mores. Throughout The Outsider, Camus illustrates society’s pressure on the individual through his setting as seen by the uncomfortable and suffocating heat of Algiers that Meursault must endure. The presence of this heat during the funeral procession, when others judge Meursault for his lack of care and emotion towards his deceased mother, and the court trial where others criticise Meursault for his lack of explanation for the murder of the Arab, implies that the presence of heat symbolises society’s oppression and judgement on a nonconformist. Salinger also utilises settings to illustrate Holden’s attempts to overcome his ostracised state. Salinger does this by surrounding Holden with other school acquaintances such as Ackley and Mal Brossard in a circa 1950’s American cinema setting. The placement of Holden in a typical teenager’s setting, such as a cinema, causes Holden to appear as if he is attempting to fit into society as a typical teenager; even though he has made it abundantly clear he cannot stand either the cinema or                                                 

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these individuals. As a result of the placement of characters in these particular settings, the reader is given a clear view of society’s pressures on the individual.

Salinger and Camus also make full use of their chronology and the perspective of their narrator in order to covey the idea of society pressuring the individual. In The Outsider, Camus’ first-person perspective allows the reader to become much more intimate with Meursault and hence witness through his eyes, the pressure that society places on him. Likewise, in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is also portrayed as the protagonist who narrates events in a first-person perspective. This along with the use of teenage idiosyncrasies such as the finishing of sentences by saying “and all” and the common employment of the emphatic “I really did”, allows the reader to observe events from a teenager’s perspective and hence the reader can, to some extent, experience the teenage peer pressure Holden endures. Furthermore, the author’s employment of flashbacks throughout their texts results in the reader learning more personal and intimate details about the protagonist’s life and hence engenders a feeling of intimacy and familiarity between the reader and the central characters. Consequently, both authors succeed in forming a psychological connection between their protagonist and the reader, where he or she can experience the hardships of the central character and hence appreciate the central ideas of texts.

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Camus and Salinger both reflect society’s desires to categorise people into certain sections of the social order, in order to demonstrate society’s overwhelming pressure on an individual to fit in. This is seen in The Outsider where  

                        

CUMULATIVE COUNT:        570 WORDS

resists the court’s pressure to justify his murdering of the Arab, claiming that the murder took place by “chance”1. In refusing to justify his action, Meursault allows the prosecutor at his trial to dub  a “heartless criminal”2, as opposed to a remorseful offender who regrets his actions. This idea is also presented in ...

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