Abstract:
Character study most frequently comes up in the criticism of narrative, one of the three forms of literature. This is so because a narrative text comprises a unique world—of creatures (characters), a language and incidents—that prompts thought. The thesis is set out to investigate the peculiarity of a hero’s tragic situation. This problem is introduced in chapter one, with the attendant research questions for which the literary investigation intends to find answers, in turn, the relevance of the study comes into view. The task of summarizing the previous studies on Camus’s The Stranger is taken by the second chapter; this review helps to highlight the gap the research will fill. This close reading adopts a conceptual framework that is built on Nietzsche’s philosophy of the underlying will to power: a hero of the high mimetic mode and of the divine form is a victim in Apollonian/Dionysian predicament. This hypothesis is delineated in chapter three. The study analyses Meursault in the high mimetic mode. The tragic hero’s situation of constraint is brought about by an unending struggle between the forces of the Apolline and the Dionysiac. The constraint Meursault faces and the stoic indifference (his response) are discussed in chapters four and five respectively. It is his reaction to his predicament that highlights the more-than-man factor working in him. He seems an Ubermensch (overman) of some sort. Furthermore features of the rough beast are subsumed under the Dionysiac intoxication (Rausch), which always confronts the Apolline Gotterbild (divine image). The rough beast is an amoral and unmotivated being that is hardly deliberative; acts solely on impulses. Meursault of The Stranger is such a figure and by nature a stranger to everyone, including himself. What gives a victim of his calibre unqualified substantiation is ataraxia, the stoic indifference to his predicament. Armed with this heuristic tool, the literary investigation hopes to gain a better understanding of the predicament of the stranger: the oddity of Meursault’s being.
