Aside from the fact that Meursault tells us that he drank tons of wine during their beach picnic, there are other hints that Meursault is not in his usual state of mind as he has been before.
In this chapter, for the first time we see Meursualt taking sides in an argument instead of just passively watching and calling things "interesting." Perhaps being drunk makes Meursault forget the fact that he's supposed to be "emotionless." Not reacting to things emotionally must take a great deal of thought and effort, and in his sober state Meursault is used to being able to filter out his emotions completely. But, once he is drunk he is no longer able to filter things normally.
This is evidenced through the fights with the men who follow Raymond and Meursault to the beach. Meursault seems to have some sort of emotional investment in the fights because instead of standing back and not fighting he takes a side with Raymond. This is a first, because in other conflicts he has never really intervened but merely watched (e.g. when Raymond beats his girlfriend and when the old man beats his dog). In the beach fights, though, Meursault looks out for Raymond by yelling "Look out, he's got a knife!". This not only shows that he was on Raymond's side, but that he was somehow emotionally invested enough to want to warn Raymond of the weapon.
Also, the way Meursault describes the beach and the hot summer day is very surreal and almost dream-like. This is because he was drunk and not seeing the world as clearly as before. He comments on the fact that he has a piercing headache and can't stand the hot sunlight. Maybe this was because he was dehydrated and the alcohol in his system also caused him to get sick. (I looked this up, and apparently drinking too much on a hot summer day makes you more likely to get heat illnesses.)
Perhaps Meursault's drunkenness is the reason why he chooses to shoot the man four more times than necessary. This is also an example of Meursault feeling emotion because he says that the four shots created unhappy emotions for him: "Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. "
All the same, I don't think that the fact that he was drunk makes his crime any less serious. It would be false to say "Oh, well. He was drunk so he didn't actually mean to kill anybody." What I do think is interesting, though, is seeing this second side to Meursault where he shows at least a small bit of emotion (fear/judgement/unhappiness).
I also thought Meursault seemed different than his usual self on that day. Maybe alcohol has the effect on him of drawing emotions out of him. This would mean he really does have emotions and motivations and the whole nihilistic schtick is an act he puts up like Jake. I find myself believing that.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, you should have already known about the alcohol/heat illness thing from the time Warren-Grice sent the student body the email telling us to make sure we stayed in the shade if we chose to drink over spring break.
This blog post brings up a really good point, because I think it's easy to forget the fact that he had drunk so much when there is so much going on in the chapter (I, for one, definitely forgot about this until I read this post). I don't think this was the sole reason he was acting different, though. Your argument makes sense up until we examine the last chapter, in which he loses control and attacks the chaplain. That loss of control and detachment from his true self that he describes in the last chapter is similar to what goes on in chapter six as he kills the Arab. However, he wasn't drunk at all in the last chapter. He wasn't in the sun either. I think that Mersault has some kind of condition where he loses control easily. Perhaps he's in denial of this and so tries to attribute his loss of control to things like alcohol and physical discomfort?
ReplyDeleteIt is more commonplace in French culture to consume a bottle of wine over lunch and not have the expectation that the drinker will be significantly impaired, and it is curious that nowhere is it suggested that M. is inebriated (by the prosecutor, the defense, by his friends, by his own self-description). But it makes sense to me, when we reread the crucial shooting scene, that the sun and heat is intensifying a sense of unreality and disorientation and even automatism that is maybe in some way related to the wine he has consumed.
ReplyDeleteSo does this alter anything significant about how we interpret/judge his actions? Does Freddy Riedenschneider see daylight here? (Not as if being drunk is a plausible defense for the charge of murder, any more than "the sun" is.)