The True Intentions of Mersault's Prosecution and the Judge

    Going through the second part of The Stranger, I often found myself feeling like something was off with the way the trial went. Although the first part of the book definitely opened my eyes to the bizarre nature of Mersault’s behavior, I found the actions and testimony of the prosecution and the judge of the trial even stranger. From trying Mersault based on morals rather than the law, to twisting Mersault’s qualities that would normally be considered admirable into a flaw and a point of prosecution, the nature of trial is most definitely odd and worth looking at. 

    To start, I found it most important to realize that, in the trial, the victim is in no way present. I didn’t realize until it came up in discussion, but the existence of the Arab man and major role as the victim in the trial is never mentioned once. Knowing this, it feels like the courtroom is in no way interested in justice for the Arab man. Rather, the prosecution makes a case that Mersault’s actions make him a monster and danger to society worthy of being. They don’t focus on the crime that he has already committed but rather look at the potential Mersault has to commit further problems in society. The prosecution and eventually the judge come to see this crime as a potential gateway into Mersault committing more severe crimes that could endanger society as we know it. In other words, they are worried about what he could do rather than what he already did, which feels like it contradicts the very nature of a trial to legally prosecute a person for a crime done. Because the case ends up revolving around Mersault’s potential to inflict danger on society rather than his actual crime, it ends up becoming a matter of moral justice rather than legal justice, where the prosecution insists that the judge has a moral obligation to behead Mersault, in order to save society from the sociopathic monster that is Mersault.

    In order to make Mersault in to the sociopathic monster that the court portrays him as, the prosecution works to manipulate the jury and the judge by twisting the meaning and significance behind Mersault’s behavior at his mother’s funeral. When the funeral caretaker acts as a witnesses at the beginning of the trial, he states that “he had been surprised by [Mersault's] calm the day of the funeral” (Camus 89).The prosecution operates on the idea that a kindhearted person should mourn their mother by showing vulnerability, sadness, and being generally shook and that Mersault showed none of these things, therefore making him morally detached and inherently “wrong”. But what was not mentioned in his defense that we as readers can realize is that Mersault has a very complex relationship with his mother, which makes it hard for him to understand how to feel. Additionally, we as readers come to see that Mersault often has difficulty playing by the book in social situations such as a funeral, which explains his seemingly insensitive behavior. Despite this, the courtroom twists this reality into making the jury and judge believe that Mersault acted the way he did at his mother’s funeral out of pure spite and inhumanity.

    Later in the book, the prosecution once again twists Mersault’s character against him in an effort to prove his inhumanity. The prosecution uses his intelligence against him, claiming,“this man is intelligent…no one can say he acted without realizing what he was doing” (Camus 100). Mersault’s intelligence is made out to be a justification for his “deliberate” decision to shoot the Arab man. However, one might also argue that this intelligence implies a counterintuitive interpretation about his decision to shoot the Arab man, that justifies his decision to shoot the Arab man as his only rational and “intelligent” option at the moment. This would make more sense because as we know Mersault fired his first shot in a quick-thinking moment of self-defense. Nonetheless, the courtroom avoids this interpretation of the case and focuses on the negative connotations of his intelligence, making him look more guilty. 

    All in all, although the courtroom continues to try to pin Mersault’s behavior as inherently wrong and bizarre, to me, the trial proceedings feel even more bizarre. The case spirals way out of control, beyond questioning the legality of the situation and instead goes in the direction of character judgment to the point where Mersault is sentenced to a beheading to pay for his inhumanity rather than his illegality. The trial progressively becomes less focused on the lives of the accused and the victim and instead becomes a statement case directed towards scaring the rest of society into conforming to social and emotional norms by condemning the peculiarities of Mersault’s character.