"The Stranger" Free write

I've noticed throughout reading the stranger that Meursault isn't really connected to things. He doesn't pay attention to Marie or his friends he's only really concerned with the physical world, in which case he's only observing things about the world and not really a part of it. This is proven by the fact that he uses descriptive language to describe his surroundings in poetic detail, but he doesn't describe his emotions (which for the most part are non-existent) or describe the people in his life, occasionally he'll comment on how good Marie looks but he doesn't talk about her as a person.

Meursault doesn't care about anything so therefore he can't connect to anything. His friends and Marie are just possessions to him, he uses them to keep himself busy or to entertain himself. I would argue that someone who is truly connected to someone doesn't "use" that person, they respect that person and care about how they feel and feel real concern for them. This connection could be called friendship or love, but those are just varying degrees of the same feeling. Connection also implies empathy, for people to be connected they have to understand each other's feelings. When we talked about Banach's lectures I came to the conclusion that people can share common experiences, emotions are part of that experience and are an experience that most people connect to.

Meurasult is different, he doesn't feel emotions (at least not until the end of the book in which case he doesn't express them) so he can't connect to someone's feelings. He couldn't connect to the woman at the funeral who was crying, or his friends or Marie. As we've seen throughout "The Stranger", not being connected leads to hollow meaningless relationships. By association we have to feel emotions to connect to people to have meaningful relationships to add meaning to our lives.