Hw #8 Who is Meursault

In the book The Stranger, Protagonist Meursault is a depressed men that is detached from his mother and the people around him. In the beginning of the book Meursault's mother dies and he does not show any kind of feelings or reactions. He just goes to his boss at work and asks him if he can take days off to arrange the funeral and the come back straight to becoming the working zombie that he is. This shows that Meursault is completely emotionless and is living just to get through life. Once Meursault is where his mother is being held, he mentions that in the past visiting his mother was always a burden. He says that he did not go to visit her because "it took up my Sunday not to mention the trouble of getting to the bus, buying tickets, and spending two hours traveling". This also shows that his relationship with his mother was not very stable. These are the words of a cold and selfish man. As I read the book, It seems that Meursault is narrating his life rather than living it. It makes me feel pretty neutral. It just feels as if a story if a narrator is telling the story. Everything that happens is just being said but there are no inner thoughts about why or how. He never releases his feelings and I always resolves to smoking when he is under some kind of stress. I understand why Meursault might have not very expressive when his mother died because he was not very close to her. I have family members that by orthodox values should be very close to me but unfortunately are not and nowadays when they decide to make a major decision that I am not aware of until after they have done it, I am not very much affected by it because they do not feel part of my life to me. However, it does not seem that Meursalt is not making a effort connected with other people and that is why he is isolated from society.