The words of these witnesses are twisted and distorted by both lawyers in an illogical attempt to prove their perceptions of Meursault’s state of mind at the time of the murder. Both lawyers retell the story of the first part of the book in an effort to prove the validity of their version of Meursault’s crime. The defense paints a picture of a hardworking, average man caught in a difficult moment who is now suffering from deep remorse. The prosecution more effectively portraits an unfeeling, monstrous man who schemed the destruction of a human with a soul which Meursault himself is claimed not to possess. Neither account is either true or certifiable, and it is for this reason that Meursault’s sentence is almost solely determined by the prosecution’s effective control of public sentiment and courtroom language. Meursault’s prosecutor twists language to his advantage when he calls Meursault’s relationship with Marie an “irregular liaison” (91) of “shameful debauchery” (92) with his “mistress” (96). The prosecution also demonstrates the effectiveness of this strategy when he repeatedly uses the words “immoral” and “monster” to describe the offender. As evidence of the jury’s severe conviction demonstrates, the prosecutor has successfully dehumanized Meursault in the eyes of the jury and judges. Meursault is, in effect, doomed before the trial even begins when his lawyer declares that “he was confident of success” (64). What success can there be for a man who has already been proved guilty? Though the lawyer may only be assuring Meursault that he feels confident of his ability to disprove the possible declaration of the premeditation of the crime, the statement already suggests that there is a distinct lack of clarity in the defense lawyer’s communicative skills.
Meursault's case is one of interest to the public of Algiers because Meursault has denied the social codes and human faculties which ‘normal’ society, represented by the audience in the courtroom, feels bound by. The prosecutor uses the gasps of shock and the astonished silences of the public in the courtroom to sway the jury’s opinion. The prosecutor demonstrates a more dynamic and subtle control over the sentiments of the courtroom than the defense lawyer with the exercise of dramatic changes in his tone of voice and expression. The lawyer convinces the courtroom, and even Meursault, of his confidence in his assertions and his disgust with an act that he wishes them to consider condemnable with his tone of voice. As Meursault himself records, “the prosecutor remarked in a malicious tone, ‘That will be all for the present’” (85). This lawyer uses the strained silence of the courtroom and a voice which Meursault thought “sounded truly emotional” (91) to pronounce Meursault’s insensitivity and heartlessness when he sees a humorous film with a new girlfriend the day after his mother’s funeral.
The prosecutor also displays a control of the court’s demeanor through his manipulation of the order in which the witnesses appear. He introduces Meursault’s guilt with a condemnation of the murderer’s behavior at his mother’s funeral and then furthers his accusation of Meursault’s social backwardness with his cross- examination of Marie. The lawyer so effectively directs his audience to the shock of Meursault’s cold-hearted indifference to his mother’s death, that Meursault claims that no attention is paid to Masson or Salamano’s testimonies. Meursault himself reveals, “After that people hardly listened to Masson who announced that I was an honest chap” (91). Meursault’s evidently unbiased report of the prosecutor’s successful technique of manipulation is crucial to further the introduction of Camus’s intended message of the absurdity of moral judgment by society into his story. Masson is the first interviewee who was actually with Meursault on the day of the crime. Masson would have been able to testify to Meursault’s feelings towards the Arabs only a few hours before the man’s murder. Instead, the prosecutor’s maneuvering is so vanquishing over any possible line of defense that the prosecutor need not even spend any time proving that Masson is an unreliable and biased witness.
The prosecutor tries to further convince the jury of Meursault’s moral corruptness by displaying his friends and his girlfriend in a contemptible light. As mentioned above, Marie becomes his ‘mistress’ with whom he practices ‘shameful debauchery.’ The prosecutor goes to great lengths to disentangle Raymond’s vices and even Meursault himself, who so rarely reaches any unfounded conclusions, does not question his motives. “I was his friend and accomplice,” (92) ‘justifies’ Meursault. The prosecutor is marking Meursault’s inaction in stopping Raymond’s practice of physical abuse and writing of Raymond’s letter as a representation of immorality when Meursault demonstrates in chapters three and four of part one, that it is merely performed out of a casual indifference. The prosecutor’s choice of words even go so far as to delicately suggest that Meursault was more involved than he claimed to be. Following the prosecutor’s logic in condemning Mersault, the more socially criminal his behavior (such as an involvement in physical abuse), the more likely it is that the Arab’s murder was premeditated.
In the prosecutor’s final summation of Meursault’s guilt of the premeditation of this murder, he includes a discussion of Meursault’s actions at his mother’s funeral, with Marie and then with Raymond, highlighting Camus’s true purpose of this trial. The prosecutor even states that the trial has superseded in nature and significance the parricide trial to follow, because the moral killing of his mother is more odious than the physical killing of a father or an Arab. In an intentionally loquacious and redundant speech, the prosecutor even goes to the extent of saying of Meursault, “a man whose heart is so empty that it forms which threatens to engulf society.”
This rash but comprehensive speech concluding the prosecutor’s case convinces its audience of Meursault’s threat to society. This is the defense lawyer’s last chance to question this lawyer’s line of prosecution, but he does not do so. The prosecution can, in truth, face little objection because there is no possible reason with which to justify Mersault’s five bullets. Camus has set up a murder without any justification and forces our society to deal with the murderer who feels no remorse, only indifference. The absurdity of the irrelevance of the prosecution’s line of questioning becomes immaterial when it is accepted that Meursault is not on trial for murder but for his moral character to which his defense can offer no redeeming testimony- society could not accept Meursault’s existentialist survival.
Bibliography
Camus, Albert. The Outsider Trans. Joseph Laredo. London (U.K.): The Penguin Group, 2000.
