What I think in chapter 4 and 5 he particularly feigned his indifference as his way of not caring because dying was inevitable, and what forced him to break, or lose his cool like in the previous quote. Well first of all I have to say, was indifference really a bad thing? The way I think of it is that if it is a way to cope well there is no problem, but you would have to completely be indifferent or else it wouldn’t work well. For example when the priest came to Meursault cell he him became mad at the priest and that in itself takes out the whole concept of indifference out of the window. The society that Meursault lived in indifference did not accept him and he was frowned upon because the society related a person not being interested to not care altogether and that lead to Meursault being charged of premeditated murder. You see this type of thing occur with the Roman Empire, in the fall of it, they stopped caring about numerous things and searched for frivolous things like entertainment. I also think that an argument could have been raised if he didn’t completely admit to being indifferent, for example, in religion people want to know what you believe in, and if your answer to that question is “I don’t know “people won’t accept it. So I think Meursault faked it because he didn’t want to raise further questions and start more arguments. For instance “I didn't feel much remorse for what I'd done. But I was surprised by how relentless he was. I would have liked to have tried explaining to been able to truly feel remorse for anything. My mind was always on what was corning next, today or tomorrow.” (Camus 96). That would be how Meursault would want to have it, plain and simple without much discussion. Now back to what I was taking about in the beginning, is indifference bad or good? The benefits of being indifferent could be that material things don’t have such an impact on you, as well as your family. Now how could being indifferent be beneficial you say? I say that it removes a certain chain from you that holds you back when you aren’t indifferent. In other words you will think more logically than emotionally.
On the other hand being indifferent is something that society doesn’t want you to become; in fact it wants you to put your best effort in society as a whole to better it. Being indifferent make ethical problems useless in the matter of ethics has two sides in which the indifferent person does not care about and also the fact that the state of being indifferent might affect your morals. So in essence, the state of being indifferent is convenient if you are an individual, but is very inconvenient if you live in a society, and it is also not fair to the society that is providing you of its goods while you just decide to not contribute. Another question that arises is indifference even possible? Can someone be emotionless or is it just a made up state of mind. In a way being human prevents us from this, well actually being an animal prevents us from this. No matter what happens, as animals we tend to care about our lives (lemmings aside) so now again I think that being indifferent impossible because being means that you wouldn’t have an opinion because they would not care about the outcome nor would they care about putting their input. Meursault has not been apathetic or indifferent because a true indifferent wouldn’t have thought anything about the man that he killed would have thought of the man as any other inanimate object and would have not even planned such an “intelligent” plan to assassinate the Arab. And even if he just did it on instinct it’s hard to believe that he just did it on instinct rather than doing it for the protection of his friend. Acceptance of everything should be what indifference is, not giving your opinion but rather accepting everything something anybody tells you, sort of like a robot.
So in The Stranger indifference can be argued against in so many ways such as is it even possible, and if so, it is completely useless in the long run, i.e. the fact that society suffers as a result of combined indifference. For instance Just like the Roman Empire, society will crumble because indifference from either indifference of the outcome of a new ruler or if the country is going to war, and also if it is possible you would have to be a 100% logical thinker which would be extremely one-sided. Invariability happens because you use both sides of the brain logical, and creative. You need more than just logic to use your brain. That’s why I think the stranger just gives you a false sense of indifference, and also Meursault himself doesn’t even claim of being indifferent towards anything, so it even leads us to a cat and mouse chase without even giving us a clue. So in the end I just think he is a phony and not and authentic “dispirited” person.
Works cited
Camus, Albert . The stranger . : Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , 1998. 117. Print.
