Excerpt
from The Stranger:
"The scorching
blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes. That's when everything began to reel. The sea carried up a
thick, fiery breath. It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being
tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in
that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where I tall started. I shook off the sweat and sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I
fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four
quick times on the door of unhappiness." (Chapter 6)
Imagery
seen in The Stranger is the archetype of sun and its sunlight. The sun and sunlight is utilized in the work to convey
the pressure Meursault was undergoing because of all his obstacles.
When Meursault was at his mother's funeral, he mentions how it suddenly gets warm and how the sun
is bothering him. Utilizing the archetype of the sun and the heat, shows how Meursault is going under pressure or is bothered
by something. The light can also be truth, that Meursault refuses to see the truth, which shows the theme of Existentialism.
Another time that Camus shows Meursault's uneasiness with sunlight is when he faces the Arab that
he later murders. As Meursault walks back to where the Arab is, he mentions how the sunlight really irritates him and bothers
him. Once more, Meursault did not want to see the truth, that he went back to the beach to kill the Arab, not to settle things
with them. Another way to see the theme of Existentialism.
