An Example Of Death And Its Denial Of The Value Of Life

Categories: Culture Ethics Metaphysics Philosophy

Essay, Pages 3 (560 words)

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In Matthew Ward‘s The Stranger, Meursault is the narrator and the protagonist. He is detached from society and from everyone he knows. Many things that would be deemed important or special to normal people don’t matter to him at all, his emotional detachment from everything affects his personal relationships with people and with his outlook on life and death as a whole. Matthew Ward said, “As he [Meursault] says toward the end of his story, as he sees things, Salamano’s dog was worth just as much as Salamano’s wife.

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Such peculiarities of perception, such psychological increments of character are Meursault.” When Meursault says the dog was worth “just as much" as the wife, he is saying that he believes all life is equal.

He is comparing a dog to a human being because he thinks that there is no meaning to life and death. Every living animal and human ends up with the same fate: death Meursault believes that there is no value in life because, through death, everyone is made equal.

We can interpret that he is saying the life of a human isn’t more important than the life of a dog, hence him comparing Salamano‘s dog to Salamano‘s wife. At the beginning of the story, Meursault’s mother dies he attends the funeral but does not care to see her body. Considering it is his mother, Meursault is completely unaffected and fine with her death. He doesn’t get sad or angry or even depressed.

His life continues as normal, as if nothing even happened her death was insignificant to him. Another instance of death and his denial of the value of life is when he was on the beach with Raymond Sintes and M. Masson when they crossed paths with two Arabs. The two Arabs had given Raymond trouble and it escalated to a fight, Meursault had a gun and he thought about death again. He mentioned that if he decided to shoot or not to shoot the gun, the same ending would still occur — death. Any life that would be lost would have no significance and would not affect his own life meursault denies the value of life and death, denies the existence of God and denies common morals. He eventually killed one of the Arabs and doesn’t seem guilty or regretful of anything even though he was later sent to prison and then sentenced to execution.

The end of the story is where Meursault has his psychological increments. After the trial, he thinks about escaping his sentence. He also thinks about and fears his immediate future once it‘s the break of dawn, the guards would come and lead him to his execution. He tries to distract himself from his thoughts but the light from outside reminds him that his execution is real and it’s coming. He cannot imagine his heart stopping for real, let alone dying when he realizes his chances of an appeal are slim to none, he faces the fact that he is going to die. He finally realizes that there is value to life, and each moment that he has in life is important he then also realizes that the most important thing in life is being alive.