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.Although the mother pillages and murders the son, Meursault considers thatthe son ‘had deserved it a bit’ (125).So the lawyers and magistrates are the voices of his subconscious, and the incident of the criminal who is to be tried for murdering his father reinforces the theme that Meursault is being tried for murdering his mother.His seeming lackof interest in the trial reflects his desire to follow her into death.For Jean Gassin there is no triumph in the second half of The Stranger, which ends with ‘the death of the hero who gives up a life that hasbecome impossible because of his mother-fixation’ (Gassin, p.212).Although this view is plausible, one cannot help agreeing withFitch, who considers that such a reading ignores the ‘intentions ofthe work’ (Fitch, ‘L’Etranger’ d’Albert Camus, un texte, p.89) because it finds Meursault guilty, whereas the text declares him innocent.As already stated in Chapter 1, there is in Camus’s writing both admiration and hatred of the mother, and it seems to me that the formerdominates in the second half of The Stranger.After the colonial issue has been resolved, however inadequately, the mother can switchfrom being identified with the Arab and can now become her son’sally in his battle with the judges.56THE STRANGERHis indifference, which becomes less an alienation and more aprotest in Part 2, is no longer directed against her; instead, she helps in his struggle against the court’s hypocrisy.At first Meursault fights his battle alone: ‘I would have preferred that mother not die’, hesays, and his lawyer ‘looked displeased’ (102).He loved his motherin the same way as everyone else did, he says, and the court clerk‘mishit the keys of his typewriter’ (105).But near the end of his trial Meursault invokes his mother to justify his conduct towards her.Asked yet again if it had not hurt him to place her in a home, hereplies that ‘neither mother nor I expected anything any longer from each other or from anyone else’ (135).So Meursault’s indifferenceis now explicitly presented as a reflection of hers.This may also explain another aspect of Marie’s prison visit.Sheis flanked by a mother who is visiting her son and by a woman whoseems to be the wife of another prisoner.Whereas the wife shouts,the mother and son (the mother dressed in black) look at each other, and she never speaks.Between the two are Marie and Meursault,who are neither mother and son nor husband and wife, and who areforced by the noise to raise their voices.If one follows the language values of The Stranger, then the mother–son bond is the deepest and, although Marie does not disappear from the novel after the visit,she does write a letter – the only time she uses the written wordoutside her work – to say she will not be visiting Meursault again.This might indicate that, as in The Plague where Rieux’s wife leaves and his mother arrives before the town is sealed, the mother–sonrelationship dominates.But it is not perceived as a conflict.Foreshadowing the reconcili-ation comes a brief moment of sympathy for the father.Contrastingwith the false father-figures of the judge and the priest, Meursault’s father appears in the last chapter as an antagonist of the guillotine.Significantly, this story is told via the mother, so that all three family members are drawn together by it.The father attends theexecution although ‘he felt ill at the idea of going to it’ (168).His act is not vulgar sensationalism, but an investigation of capital punishment such as his son will undertake during his meditations inhis cell.On his return the father ‘had thrown up for part of themorning’ (168), thus putting himself in the opposite camp from thejudges.The Stranger57The reconciliation with the mother, which takes up the episodeof her evening walks with Pérez, comes in the closing pages.In Part 1, Meursault did not interpret her actions, but here he does: ‘So near death, mother must have felt liberated and ready to live everythingover again’ (185).Her affirmation of life is a model to her son, and she anticipates him as a figure of the absurd.This theme will be raised in our discussion of the final chapter, but here one may note that the foundations for this reconciliation werelaid earlier during the prison and trial chapters, where Meursault’s victory over his judges is won by pitting his own and her indifference against the language of authority [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]