Assorted Thoughts Caused by The Stranger

As the title indicates, this blog entry will be less organized than my typical one. That's okay. That's what the blogs are for, and that's the nature of The Stranger. It's interesting that despite being one of the less surreal novels that we've dealt with in both content and style, it's made me the least sure of myself. At least with Kafka, I knew how to feel about most of it, and I had relatively straightforward thoughts. With The Stranger, I find myself having these kind of thoughts (NSFW language on the link), that Louis C.K. calls "of course, but maybe..." thoughts. The Stranger doesn't make them seem that weird until we think about them though. "Of course killing's wrong. But maybe, it's okay in Meursault's case?"

Another interesting feature of the second half of the book is that Meursault doesn't really seem normal emotionally until the trial, where his life is scrutinized by the court. I thought in the first part that he did seem psychopathic in his complete lack of empathy, judgment of himself or others, or morality, as far as we can tell at that point. These are traits of psychopaths—it doesn't mean he's a danger to society, it just means he's abnormal emotionally to a pretty severe extent, as we can see with his helping Raymond, etc. It doesn't mean he's violent; there's a surprisingly high number of CEOs who are categorized as psychopaths, and have not killed anyone or any such behavior. Meursault is charismatic and interesting because of his lack of emotion and judgment of others. We're captivated by his behavior such as laying in bed smoking "for a few hours" and his strange response to his mother's death. Yet at the end of the novel, we see him showing more emotion. In the last chapter he begins by again being distant but mentioning (though not really conveying) his extreme sadness and joy as he thinks about whether his appeal will go through or not. His breakdown with the chaplain at the end as well is an extreme indicator of his rather repressed emotion.

Some thoughts on the trial: It's strange how Meursault is tried not really on the basis of his murder but on his response to his mother's death. I wouldn't agree if the court had him executed for his murder of the Arab,—I'm strongly against the death penalty—but I could understand. I can't understand their trying him solely on his not mourning his mother's death, and not mentioning the killing of the Arab except to decide that because he didn't properly show emotion for the death of his mother, he must have premeditated the crime. The prosecution also claims he's guilty of murdering his mother for sending her to a state funded home when he was no longer financially able to support her? Meursault was right. His lawyer was not as good as the other lawyer. He seems like he's trying to fit Meursault in a box he doesn't fit in, especially in his particular case, "well, he loved his mother, and he had friends." As the judge points out after Meursault's claim the murder was an accident, at least that's a defense. His lawyer should have been contesting the facts about the premeditation of the murder, and challenging statements by the other lawyer. Claiming that the defendant is guilty of murdering his mother is not proper court practice anywhere, as far as I can tell, especially since it is blatant hyperbole for emotional effect. His lawyer didn't even really seem to listen to Meursault's case details. It seems almost like he has premade defenses based on the situation, and he said, "oh, let me get the muder defense out again." Even if he's not the one responsible for Meursault's sentence, he certainly doesn't help things any—he's assured Meursault will get a few years in prison followed by service, and instead he gets an execution.

Perhaps the trial represents what's in all of us. On the one side, we could be Meursault, and we could kill someone, just because we have a gun. On the other hand, we could be trying people based solely on our own ideals, and condemning them for different; we're just waiting for the chance. When someone who challenges our sense of meaning comes along, it really affects us. We don't want our lives to be meaningless. Just as the chaplain had this reaction to Meursault, we can see him have this reaction to the chaplain in the last chapter. We're willing to kill someone not for killing a man, but because he challenged our ideals and conventions.

Fight Club and The Sun Also Rises

First, I will say, I've avoided spoilers as much as possible, so hopefully I won't ruin either story if you haven't read it, but obviously you'll get more out of this entry if you've seen/read both. Second, I admit, Fight Club and The Sun Also Rises are very different. In terms of voice, setting, and characters, that is (and to be clear when I'm writing here, I refer to both the movie and the book, so I'll specify which when there's a point where they differ). At the same time, the themes, and many of the dynamics between the characters are very similar. First off, the way the Narrator and Jake interact with other characters is very similar. There's lots of action that goes on between other characters, and while we experience the books (and movie) through their inner voice and therefore get a view of how they see the world, when there are other characters, they do most of the talking, where Jake or the Narrator will add a few words here and there. We see very much through the eyes of the respective protagonists, and as narrators, they do a lot of talking to us, but this is mainly to convey thought. Our protagonists aren't very chatty in person.

Another small characteristic that both Jake and the Narrator share is that they are both insomniacs, to some degree. In the Sun Also Rises, we see Jake in Paris, unable to sleep late at night, miserable in a hotel. It's implied this is not an uncommon event. In Fight Club we see the Narrator suffering from debilitating insomnia early on, and much of the early part of the story focuses on this, and later it becomes a plot device.

Broader than stylistically, themes of the two stories are very similar. We see rather distinctly in both Fight Club and The Sun Also Rises a story which seems to say "wouldn't it be better without women, where men could just do manly things with other guys?" In fact, both stories either heavily suggest it, or outright say this. In the passage where Jake and Bill go off fishing in The Sun Also Rises, Jake, who we've seen miserable and suffering from insomnia back in Paris with Brett, says "it felt good to be warm and in bed." This is one of the few "happy" (if you can call it that) endings to a chapter in the book. He and Bill are also happy fishing during their days without Brett. The chaos of the end of the novel doesn't occur until they get back to Pamplona with Mike, Brett, and Cohn.

Similarly, Fight Club rather explicitly conveys this message. The Narrator, to combat his insomnia, has taken to going to support groups for diseases he does not have, and crying during "partner therapy" one-on-one sessions. Unless he cries, he can't sleep. Soon another "faker," Marla, comes to the same support groups, and he can no longer cry. He thinks, "this was my vacation... and she ruined everything." Like in The Sun Also Rises, every time Marla (one of the only women in the entire story) comes into the mix, bad things happen. At another time in the story, Tyler Durden and the Narrator are talking, and the topic of marriage comes up, and Tyler says, "we're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need." The fishing trip in this case is replaced by "fight club," where men sign up for fights against each other as a sort of therapy. And it works, for a while, anyway.

Another common trait of both stories is how comfortable the protagonists and their closest friend are with their affection for each other. At one point in The Sun Also Rises, Bill says to Jake, "listen, you're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anyone on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York." Though Jake doesn't explicitly say it to Bill, we can reasonably see that he feels about the same way. In Fight Club (the novel), the Narrator even explicitly says "I want Tyler." In both Fight Club and The Sun Also Rises, we see very deep conversations between the protagonist and their male friend. Bill and Jake talk about Brett with more candor than we see anywhere else. Bill and Jake also discuss his injury, and Bill seems to be the only one aside from Brett who knows about Jake's injury. The Narrator and Tyler both spend a good deal of time talking about their fathers, marriage, and other such topics. And frankly, I must point out, for both stories, the protagonist and their friend are rather comfortable with nudity—Bill and Jake talk as Bill puts on his underwear, and in the film, the Narrator and Tyler talk while Tyler is taking a bath.

There is also a deep underlying theme of emasculation in both stories. Jake's is obvious—he was essentially neutered during the war, and most of the story focuses on this. The Narrator's is a lot more subtle. He feels emasculated, not by injury, but by society. One of the best ways we see this is one of his support groups. the support group we see first, and the only one we go that far into, is one for testicular cancer survivors: "Remaining Men Together." We could probably see Jake fit in with this group, off in the corner, being "tough." The Narrator seems to feel he has a right to be there, at least more than the other groups, though we learn it's not his favorite group. This is addressed directly when at one point Marla and the Narrator divide support groups, and the Narrator says, "Okay, good, fine. Testicular cancer should be no contest, I think," to which Marla replies, "Well, technically, I have more of a right to be there than you. You still have your balls." Fight Club largely focuses on this theme of emasculation, with quotes from the Narrator such as, "the people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA catalogs," while Tyler says things such as, "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

Lastly, I'd like to point out that both Bill and Tyler fill the same role in the respective main character's lives and the story. Bill and Jake banter endlessly, and Bill gives Jake lessons in irony, which Jake picks up, while he plays the straight man, setting Bill up for a joke here or there. Tyler has a similar relationship, but it's more as a prophet figure, which again, the Narrator picks up on, but plays straight man, setting Tyler up to see what he'll say. Both Bill and Tyler are extremely charismatic, and close to the protagonist. They fill both a friendship and idol role in the lives of the main character. And that's why they're so close. This seems to be the ideal of life in some ways for both Hemingway and Palahniuk, or at least the one that they convey in their stories.

Edit: Kai raised an interesting point that I hadn't noticed at first, and I won't claim his own work for my own, so just read it below.

One thing I realized that I neglected to mention initially is the major pro-pastoral theme in both stories. In The Sun Also Rises, we see Jake happy only on the fishing trip with Bill—a very back-to-nature setting. He is not happy either in Paris or Pamplona, which are the cities he mostly spends time in in the novel. In Fight Club, there is very much an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-consumerist theme, and much of what the Narrator and Tyler try to do amount to a "getting back to nature" ideal. I'll leave you with this telling quote from Tyler:

In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.