Haven't done a blog post in a while, but hopefully this one will be interesting to make up for it. I was going through The Stranger again, looking for information for my response paper, and I was quite intrigued by the trial that basically took up half of the novel. I found the whole trial very ironic. Meursault, who we know throughout the book as indifferent and rather silent, is now denied the chance to speak in court when he actually wants to speak. When he does get to speak, he fumbles his words and says that it was because of the sun, causing the audience to laugh at him. It is moments like these that really make me sympathize with Meursault. I love what Camus has done in The Stranger. He manages to present Meursault, who was clearly guilty killing the Arab, in such a way that the readers are able to connect and empathize with Meursault.
Going back to the trial, I found the whole event rather preposterous. We mentioned this in class too, but none of the lawyers seem to tell the right story of Meursault. From an outsider's perspective, the prosecutor does portray him with quite a lot of accuracy. It isn't too hard to understand where the prosecutor is getting his information and yet Meursault's lawyer also provides evidence that is kind of correct and yet doesn't present and accurate picture of Meursault. During this whole time, Meursault has been meaning to speak but can't because his lawyer doesn't want him to. This frustrates me even more because not only does Meursault want to speak but can't, but his explanation for what happened sound pretty ridiculous anyways.
Camus's portrayal of the court of law doesn't really reassure me of the system that humans have created. The idea that truth will come to light and prevail in court doesn't appear in The Stranger and our system is criticized instead. The movie that we watched, The Man Who Wasn't There, also had a similar portrayal of our court of law.
SPOILER ALERT
Freddy Riedenschnieter (best I could do) chose which story would stick the best in order to try to prove that Doris was innocent. In the end, he ended up giving this rather confusing and ridiculous explanation that didn't have anything to do with Doris. This movie complemented the image that Camus was depicting, that the court system is flawed since the court authorities try to make up their own story that goes along best with the evidence, even if the story is false.
On a side note, I recently started to Suits which, along with most TV shows, separate the characters from good and bad pretty quickly. I've always wondered about the back stories behind villains and The Stranger is definitely helping increase my curiosity.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the court makes up their own story, rather they make the hard facts of the murder more abstract and symbolic (bringing his reaction to his mother's funeral into it, for example). I actually thought that Freddy's argument had some good points. It isn't a conventional argument in a court of law, but it made me sympathize with the court a little bit (as you probably know from class discussions, I have been very anti-court), because it and Freddy are doing the same thing. Abstracting the actual events, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if either situation plays the abstraction as a good thing. In the book, the abstraction is for social commentary, and in the movie, the abstraction is largely for comedic effect, as Freddy is played largely to show a ridiculous (but not too ridiculous) portrayal of a lawyer.
Delete