The Stranger Essay - Paragraph 2

And I felt ready to live it all again too. As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope and for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself – like a brother, really – I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. (129)

At the end of the novel we see a release of all that he has contained: emotions, sadness and anger the feelings will all trap within us in our everyday lives. Every day we are alive we are hurt we are angered we are annoyed, but society expects us to contain these feelings into a box. This box continues to build up more anger, more hatred, more feelings. Yet, once we allow this lid to be released the flurry of emotions is released with such explosive anger that one can not even imagine contain it. Meursault has removed himself from life to protect himself from the aggravations and feelings of life those that hurt us and destroy us. He has had a lifetime of these memories that have been trapped, contained, chained within looking for a way out a weakness in Meursault’s emotional armor. His armor was the distractions of his life the tasks he must complete and things to do every day. He tries to repress his feelings, hence why he is removed the concept of mourning when his mother dies, its why he fails to understand love, it is why he fails to understand anger and revenge. The members of the court fail to see this emotional absence as a cocoon or a shell to protect himself from emotional damage.