I Feel Uncomfortable

Reading The Stranger is making me feel incredibly uncomfortable. Initially, I was surprised at the seeming lack of emotion Meursault has when his mother dies. He never once explicitly states that he's upset about it. This could be Hemingway-esque, but it feels like it's different than Hemingway. When Jake is alone in his room crying at night, it's extremely clear that he's sad. However, as I'm reading The Stranger, I'm noticing that although it could be interpreted as a sort of scratching-the-iceberg-tip narrative, it's much more open to interpretation than The Sun Also Rises was.

One could argue that Meursault has experienced some sort of trauma (his mother's death, or something else?) that has influenced his personality and made him extremely passive. Passive is really the only way I can describe him. He is so passive that he seems indifferent to everything. He doesn't care where he lives, who he marries, or what his "friends" do no matter how awful it is. He does care about drinking good coffee and having nice swims with Marie and having a nice physical relationship with Marie. In Psychology we studied a theory of love that said to have the perfect relationship with someone, you need passion (lust), intimacy (very close friendship), and commitment. It seems that Meursault is only capable of passion and commitment. However, his commitment isn't really even entirely there; he only agrees to marry Marie because he doesn't see why he shouldn't, which doesn't seem like true commitment to me. It doesn't seem like he'll cheat on her though (he refuses to go to a "whorehouse" with Raymond, although he doesn't say why he doesn't want to), so he is committed to her in a very technical sense. It seems that all of Meursault's passions in life are related to physical pleasures: the good coffee makes him happy because it tastes good, swimming make him feel nice, and having sex with Marie feels good. I have yet to notice him mention any pleasures that aren't purely physical. Yes, these are simple pleasures, but they are all only physical. Even when he talks about missing his mother, he misses her because the apartment feels physically too large for him alone.

Sarah mentioned in class that Meursault could possibly be a psychopath. Now that I'm thinking about it, I think there is a lot of evidence to support this idea. We have no evidence that Meursault feels any emotions at all. He just goes with the flow and does whatever pleases him physically. He satisfies his instinctual needs (i.e. he thinks Marie is attractive so he wants to have sex with her so he does--a very Freudian example of fulfilling basic desires of our id), but he doesn't seem to have any emotional needs at all. This makes me feel so incredibly uncomfortable. I want to get to know Meursault better, but he's definitely not telling us something, and I need to know what that something is. Until I do, I can't think of any rationalization for his lack of emotion, and that's very creepy in a way (also, I don't see how Marie is in love with him and wants to marry him--he's made it clear he feels no love at all for her!).