The Stranger and the Social Machine

The Stranger and the Social Machine

A Lord Acton of Britain once said that power tends to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. The laws, customs, and traditions that define a people as cohesive units are what make up society— it has almost absolute power over the people within it. That is where the need to conform comes from; nails that stick up above the rest are hammered down the hardest. Nothing shows this more than the guillotine; the device society uses to rid itself of those deemed unfit. In The Stranger, Meursault is an aberration. He neither rejects or accepts society and merely exists. He defies the law and breaks out of an accepted sphere of morality. The consequences for this include imprisonment and execution, punishing Meursault for the actions that have been mandated as inexcusable by society. While the laws that Meursault broke were mandated by the government, I am constrained by the unwritten laws that govern behavior. The expectations of my family, peers, and social class dominate my actions, thoughts, and feelings. Social pressure and expectation drive, whereas Meursault doesn’t seem to have any motivation whatsoever, even with the threat of death over his head. I envy his freedom from social expectation.

However, freedom has its downsides, as shown by Meursault’s reaction to the death of his mother. All of the workers and residents of the nursing home expect the solemn, stereotypical mourning son. Instead, they received an apathetic Meursault who is ambivalent about his mother’s passing and focuses more on the inconvenience than the personal tragedy. He states that he “probably did love Maman, but that it didn’t mean anything” (65). This is important; Meursault rejects the cultural importance of family. His subsequent sentencing to the guillotine is a symbol of how the institutions that uphold cultural constructs, such as family, eliminate those who stand against them. A social machine of death in the name of the greater good. I...