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Module A: Textual
Conversations
The Stranger The Meursault Investigation

Meursault: contre-enquête- INVESTIGATION

HSC QUESTION

 You should now

Have a third clearly
Written and supported
reading of Meursault –
500 words
AND
A rough reading of Harun
Around 1000 words
Chapters 6-11

 RELATIONHSIP WITH HIS MOTHER

 GOD & RELIGION

 MERIEM

 POSTCOLONIALISM

 SECOND MURDER & IMPRISONMENT

 THIS WEEK YOU WILL HAVE SOME RESOURCES GIVEN TO YOU. PLEASE
READ THEM CAREFULLY. IF YOU MISS A LESSON COME AND SEE ME.
She taught me to read the book in a
certain way, tilting it sideways as
though to make invisible details fall
out (The Meursault Investigation)

RESISTANT READING:
 Resistant readings reject dominant tendencies and
interpretations. Readers reposition themselves in relation to
the text by taking on an unrepresented position or voice.
Terms – add to these
Subaltern

Postcolonial

The Other

Orientalism

Absurdism
SOME QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE STUDY OF THESE
TEXTUAL PAIRINGS

Questions raised by this module all centre around the ways in which the
second text responds to the first text
 Does it seek to extend on all or some of the ideas and features of the first
text?
 Does it stand in opposition to it?
 Does it seek to pay homage to it?
 Does it use the first text as a jumping off point or does it in fact stay true to
the first text?
 Does it borrow some elements and change others?
 Does it seek to reinterpret the first text?
 Does it provoke responders to revise their opinions of the first text?
AS WELL AS…………

 Does it seek to erase the first text or some aspects of it?

 Does it seek to refine our understanding of the first text or our understanding
of the concepts engaged with by the first text?
 What effect would there be on our response to the second text if we did not
know the first text?
 Is the second text reliant on the first text or can it stand on its own?
 Is every composer somehow responding to an earlier text or texts?
 Does it reject the values of the first text or instead the values of some
interpretations of the first text?
Resonances:
 Both narrators murder someone
 Both texts in the form of confessional monologue
 Both narrators have ambivalent relationships to their
mothers
 Both narrators struggle with orthodoxy and the
expectations of others (Meursault – his career, marriage,
the court); (Harun – fighting for the revolution;
expectations of mother)
 The ghost in the bar of The Meursault Investigation (p58)
seems to be a version of Camus and he is described as
being Like a reflection
 Both texts critique religion from an atheistic standpoint
Alignment

 after killing the Frenchman Harun says under the arm that had just
destroyed the balance of things (77) echoing Meursault’s statement
after killing the Arab I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the
day (59)
 last lines of The Stranger – I had only to wish that there be a large
crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me
with cries of hate (123); last lines of The Meursault Investigation: I too
would wish them to be legion, my spectators, and savage in their hate
(143)
 The impassioned interrogation by the judge of Meursault and by the
officer of Harun, who are both resistant to exhortation and appeals to
dominant narratives – Christianity (Meursault) and patriotism (Harun)
Mirror

 We stayed like that, half asleep, for a long time echoing

Meursault’s description of Marie: We lay on the float for a long
time, half asleep (20)
 She wanted to know if I loved her. I answered that I didn’t
know what that meant (135) echoing she asked me if I loved
her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so
(35) – then undermined by claiming the scene was made up
 Both narrators resist the exhortations of religious figures
and react with insult and violence
 Musa is a half-rhyme of Meursault
Rejection of the first text by the second:

 Judging from your enthusiasm, the book’s success is still

undiminished, but I repeat, I think it’s an awful swindle
[…] I had the feeling I was pressing my face against the
window of a big room where a party was going on that
neither my mother not I had been invited to (64)
 [when Harun shown a copy of The Stranger]: I was
distracted, unsettled by that woman’s presence (127)
 Everything was there except the essential thing: Musa’s
name! (130)
Acknowledgment of the power
 the products of your writer’s genius (53)
 When your hero’s in his cell, that’s when he’s best at asking
the big questions (95)
 For a brief while, I knew your hero’s genius: the ability to tear
open the common, everyday language and emerge on the other
side, where a more devastating language is waiting to narrate
the world in another way […[ the words like pitilessly carved
stones, a language as naked as Euclidian geometry […] He
describes the world as if he’s going to die at any moment (100)
 an overwhelming book – “like a sun in a box” was the way she
put it (125)
 what I found in there [The Stranger] was my own reflection
(131)
 Equivocal response

Acknowledgement/compliment?

that strange book of his, wherein he tells a murder story with the
genius of a mathematician examining a dead leaf (127)
 Awareness of the multiplying effect of writing
a text after another:
 I felt as though a sixth and final bullet had just pierced a new hole in my brother’s skin
(124)
Liberty – The Outsider
 Meursault’s smoking near his mother’s corpse – Then I felt like having
a smoke. But I hesitated, because I didn’t know if I could do it with
Maman right there. I thought about it; it didn’t matter (8)
 I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn’t see any reason to
change my life (41)
 I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she
wanted to (41)
 ‘Why? You must tell me why. Why?’ Still I didn’t say anything (68)
 he cut me off and urged me one last time, drawing himself up to his
full height and asking me if I believed in God. I said no. (69)
 I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree,
with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowering overhead, little
by little I would have gotten used to it (77)
Liberty - The Meursault Investigation
 like Meursault, imprisoned in the same cell (10)
 She seemed to resent me for a death I basically refused to undergo
[…] I had a lot of resistance in me (36)
 Books and your hero’s language gradually enabled me to name things
differently and to organise the world with my own words
 I had a right to the fire of my presence in the world – yes, I had a
right to it! – despite the absurdity of my condition, which consisted
in pushing a corpse to the top of a hill before it rolled back down,
endlessly (47)
 Arab. I never felt an Arab, you know. Arab-ness is like Negro-ness,
which only exists in the white man’s eyes.
 And therefore I detest religions and submission. (66)
Liberty - The Meursault Investigation
 I felt thoroughly free in my cell, without Mama or Musa. (105)
 They were going to set me free without explanation, whereas I
wanted to be sentenced (110-111)
 a look of defiance that spoke volumes about her resistance to her
family’s conservatism (128)
 Her type of woman has disappeared in this country today: free,
brash, disobedient (135)
 To cry out that I’m free, and that God is a question, not an answer
(139)
 [of himself]: parades his freedom around like a provocation in that he
doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t go to the mosque, has neither wife
nor children (140)
Indeterminacy –(unclear) The Stranger
 Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. (3)
 Raymond gave me a very firm handshake and said that men always
understand each other (33)
 Raymond told me not to let things get to me. At first I didn’t
understand. Then he explained that he’d heard about Maman’s death
but that it was one of those things that was bound to happen sooner
or later. I thought so too. (33).
 ‘Do you want my life to be meaningless?’ he shouted. As far as I could
see, it didn’t have anything to do with me (69)
 I blurted out that it was because of the sun (103)
 had left me with the impression of a colourless swirling river that
was making me dizzy (104)
 He seemed so certain about everything, didn’t he? And yet none of
his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head (120)
Indeterminacy – The Meursault Investigation
 I’ve rehashed this story in my head so often, I almost can’t remember
it any more (1)
 the story of Musa, my murdered brother, who took on a different
form every time, according to my mother’s mood (15)
 a compulsive liar (143)
 which is truer? An intimate question. It’s up to you to decide (143).
 [about God and God’s biography]: No one has ever met him, not even
Musa, and no one knows if his story is true or not (143)
 A man very strict about shades of meaning […] he practically
required them to be mathematical […] His world is clean, clear,
exact, honed by morning sunlight, enhanced with fragrances and
horizons. The only shadow is cast by ‘the Arabs’, blurred incongruous
objects left over from ‘days gone by’. (2)
Indeterminacy – The Meursault Investigation
 If I found our old house again, death would end up finding us (23)
 For Musa’s body was never found […] Musa had vanished, he was
absolutely, perfectly, incomprehensibly dead (33)
 had insulted his grandmother, maybe, and then she’d add, “Or one of
his relatives, or at least a roumi, like him (44)
 There’s not a word in the book about it. That’s denial of a shockingly
violent kind, don’t you think? (46)
 The truth is, she committed that crime. She held my arm steady
while Musa held hers and so on back to Abel or his brother (89)
 Every surge of desire was accompanied by the knowledge that life
reposes on nothing solid (91)
Indeterminacy – The Meursault Investigation
 I didn’t collaborate with the colonists […] but I wasn’t a mujahid
either, and it bothered a great many people that I was sitting there
in the middle, in that intermediary state (105)
 “Your brother’s a martyr, [the officer said] but you, I don’t know …” I
found this way of putting it incredibly profound. (110)
 the infinity of commentaries on every one of its chapters (130)
 that God is a question, not an answer (139)
 [of the imam]: He seemed so sure of himself, didn’t he? And yet none
of his certainties was worth one hair on the head of the woman I
loved (141)
 Time – Camus
 Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. (3)
 I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my
execution (123)
 Once again the main problem was killing time. Eventually, once I learned how
to remember things, I wasn’t bored at all. (78)

The Meursault Investigation

 it goes back more than half a century (1)

 It’s a story that begins at the end and goes back to the beginning (2)
 [of Tawi]: early each morning, it was his habit to step outside and pee on a wall […] his
ritual was so unvarying that he served as a clock (17)
 I didn’t want to kill time. I don’t like that expression. I like to look at time, follow it
with my eyes, take what I can. (105)
Grief – The Stranger
 The woman kept on crying. It surprised me, because I didn’t know
who she was. I wished I didn’t have to listen to her any more. (10)
 Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his
cheeks (18)
 She gave a little start but didn’t say anything (20)
 Salamano:
 muttering incoherently (38); Then he got mad: “Pay money for that
bastard – ha! He can damn well die!” (39); He was looking down at
the tips of his shoes and his scabby hands were trembling (39); His
life had changed now and he wasn’t too sure what he was going to do
(45-46).
 And from the peculiar little noise coming through the partition, I
realised he was crying (39)
Grief – The Stranger
 made fun of me because, she said, I had on a “funeral face”. (47)
 And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness
(59)
 He asked me if I had felt any sadness that day. The question caught
me by surprise and it seemed to me that I would have been very
embarrassed if I’d had to ask it. […] Nevertheless I answered that I
had pretty much lost the habit of analysing myself and that it was
hard for me to tell him what he wanted to know. (65)
 At one time or another all normal people have wished that their
loved ones were dead (65)
 The director then looked down at the tips of his shoes and said that I
hadn’t wanted to see Maman, that I hadn’t cried once (89) which is
contrasted to the testimony of Perez ‘You understand I was too sad.
So I didn’t see anything. My sadness made it impossible to see
anything (91)
 more than sorry I felt kind of annoyed (70)
Grief - The Meursault Investigation

 Please understand me, I’m not speaking in either sorrow or anger.

I’m not even going to play the mourner (6)
 I almost never wept for him, I just stopped looking at the sky the way
I used to (10)
 I was allowed to hear only one story at night […] It was the story of
Musa, my murdered brother (15)
 I remember starting to cry for no reason, just because everyone was
looking at me (24)
Grief - The Meursault Investigation

 – the macabre pleasure of a never-ending period of mourning (37)

 I’d walked backwards about ten meters before collapsing in tears
(57)
 her [the mother’s] mourning period evolved into a surprising comedy,
a marvelous act she put on and refined until it became a masterpiece
 she [Meriem] contented herself […] with giving my sorrow the
nobility of a precious object (133)
Religion – The Stranger
 he politely informed me (66) is only a cover for the hysteria
underneath He took out a silver crucifix which he brandished as he
came towards me. And in a completely different, almost cracked
voice, he shouted (68)
 drawing himself up to his full height […] I said no (69)
 He fell back in his chair […]
 I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God (120)
 what he was talking about didn’t interest me (116)
 I said that I didn’t believe in God. He wanted to know if I was sure
and I said that I didn’t see any reason to ask myself that question
(116)
 I told him he wasn’t my father; he wasn’t even on my side (120)
 he was living like a dead man (120)
Religion – The Meursault Investigation
 [of wine] Why is it treated as though it’s of the devil, when it’s
supposed to be flowing profusely in Paradise.” (51)
 it’s Fridays I don’t like. I often spend them on the balcony of my
apartment, looking at the people, the streets, and the mosque. It’s
so imposing, it’s as though I prevents you from seeing God (65)
 I myself don’t dare , I’m marginal enough in this city as it is (65)
 religion is like public transportation I never use
 This God – I like travelling in his direction, on foot if necessary, but I
don’t want to take an organised trip
 In our country, religious faith encourages laziness in private matters
and authorizes spectacular negligence every Friday […] Have you
noticed people are dressing worse and worse? (68)
Religion – The Meursault Investigation
 Friday? It’s not a day when God rested, it’s a day when he decided to run
away and never come back (69)
 I know this from the hollow sound that persists after the men’s prayer,
and from their faces pressed against the window of supplication. And from
their coloring, the complexion of people who respond to fear of the
absurd with zeal (69)
 I feel like […] yelling at him [his neighbour] to quit reciting his sniveling
prayers, accept the world, open his eyes to his own strength, his own
dignity (69)
 How can you believe God has spoken to only one man, and that one man
has stopped talking forever? (70-71)
 We reached the train station, still embracing. You could do that in those
days. Not like today. (134)
 There’s a whole pack of religious fanatics hounding me (139)
Monday Week 7

 PERIOD 1

 A CRAFT OF WRITING TASK FOR THE PERIOD.

 THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR TERM 2.

 HOMEWORK:
 Read & annotate articles.
 Draft some paragraphs for the 2020 HSC question.
 Read chapter summaries in handout for Daoud.
 JACKSON & ZOE – PART 2 OF CAMUS…BRIEF DISCUSSION.
 JEREMY – PRISON SECTION OF DAOUD
 POMO DISCUSSION- LILY CHLOE & ???
 GERAINT - COLONIALISM