The Role of the Sun in The Stranger

In The Stranger, the sun seems to dictate all of Meursalt’s emotions. Depending on how hot it is he becomes drowsy, irritated or joyful. This is quite the range for Meursalt, who has relatively few emotions throughout the novel. But mostly, the sun’s heat is extremely oppressive and makes Meursalt anxious and agitated. This struck me as weird, since the sun in literature is usually described as comforting and beautiful. On the other hand, I understand how the sun could be mostly a curse in a country whose landscape is largely desert.

 But in the novel the sun goes beyond just being an annoyance -- it actively torments Meursalt and plays a direct role in the Arab’s murder. But the sun’s antagonism came in stages. Initially, Meursalt enjoyed the sun, which made him doze off. But later on he becomes annoyed with it. Meursalt mentions “hot sand underfoot,” indicating his annoyance before murder had ever entered his mind. Meursalt then describes how the sun
was "shining almost directly overhead into the sand," making the temperature unbearable and leading to the irritation that clouds his judgement (such as it is) and makes him feel trapped. More significantly, as the first standoff with the Arabs approaches, Meursalt notices that "the sun looked red to [him] now," foreshadowing the violence to come. The ultimate omen is the "keen blade of light flashing up from the knife, scarring my eyelashes, and gouging into my eyeballs." This directly links the sun to the murder, as an 'active participant' and the only real motive Meursalt has.

Re-examining chapter 6, we find more evidence of the sun's direct antagonism. The sun "beats down on [Meursalt's] bare head," driving him on. It "was starting to burn his cheeks," inflicting actual pain that he wants to avoid, driving his progress along the sand. Lastly, there is the glint off the knife. All these quotes combined give the picture that the sun begins antagonizing Meursalt, then physically pushing Meursalt so much that he kills another person. 

Nonetheless, Meursalt is still to blame. The sun intensifies the background restlessness and anxiety that were already present in him, and its actual control comes from Meursalt's strong responses to the physical world. The extreme discomfort leads Meursalt to act on these negative emotions and his impulses, thus actively pushing him towards violence.

Sassy Samsa

DISCLAIMER: This blog post isn't actually meant for grading, I just found something too good to pass up

Someone on this planet has visualized, created, and modeled a Sexy Gregor Samsa Costume. "Pics or it's not real," the audience cries. Behold:

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DISCLAIMER 2: I searched for the name of the creator to give due credit, but I found nothing. Please let me know if you have better luck.

The Samsa family's metamorphosis as a Rags-to-Riches plotline

DISCLAIMER: This post has a positive tone but I’m not a fan of Gregor’s fam

 

This is definitely going out on a limb, but while I was commenting on Madie’s blog I was struck by a parallel between the Samsa family’s metamorphosis and a rags-to-riches story - sorry, not for Gregor.

Such tales usually start by showing us how terrible the protagonist’s life is, and then narrating an event that changes everything. The Metamorphosis starts differently - we see the event that changes everything, but boy oh boy it isn’t the magical lamp from Aladdin. Working backwards, we can see how much Gregor’s life sucked, but also how shut in his family was - even though many of their constraints were self-imposed.

So, what actually are the hardships of the Samsas before Gregor transforms? He picked an apartment for them which they hate, yet they never mention it to him. They are shut in/stuck in this apartment because their father is ‘too feeble to work’ and they have to take care of him. Poor Grete dreams of going to the violin conservatory, but it will never work out because of her father’s debts, which Gregor is working to pay off. Sounds pretty grim. And THEN Gregor turns into a giant bug.

Now comes the success and working-through-hardship-towards-a-goal montage. Since The Metamorphosis features Gregor, who’s shut in his room for most of the novel, we only learn bits and pieces of the family’s changing life. But it all comes together the second time Gregor leaves his room. We see that Gregor’s father is stronger, more confident, and has a job at a bank, complete with a prestigious (or pretentious) uniform. Gregor’s mother has taken up sewing work, and Grete -- ironically -- is a salesgirl. To everyone’s surprise, the family is getting along perfectly fine without Gregor - they even had money saved up before his transformation.  

The next stage in a rags-to-riches story is the crisis, which I think is most prominent in part III, where Gregor emerges from his room and scares the tenants. At this point, he’s been a bug for months with no sign of changing and no indication that he is still Gregor. The Samsas’ are feeling worked to the bone, are in a bad spot with their tenants, and this horrifying bug is still there. They want to move on with their lives, and Grete makes them come to terms with the fact (empirical from their point of view) that this insect isn’t Gregor. There’s no boss battle where the Samsas prove their worth and show off their independence, but ultimately the challenge (Gregor) disappears.

The ending is definitely typical of the rags-to-riches genre; Herr Samsa, Frau Samsa and Grete take a day off work (asserting their independence) and head off to the country to relax. Along the way they discuss their jobs, and realize they are “very good and held particularly good promise for the future.” They fantasize about moving to a new and smaller flat, and finding a husband for Grete. Summarily, the Samsas have everything they need and adventures ahead as they literally walk off into the country sun.

Jake and Catholicism

As we were reading The Sun Also Rises, multiple references to Jake’s relationship with the Catholicism came up, and I started wondering why he seemed so ambivalent about it. The Church very important to him, and is one of the ways Jake tries to find meaning in his life. As we discussed in class, Jake’s spirituality is increased in Spain - he actively went to church, not only in the instance where he narrated his prayers, but once again with Brett, and multiple other unspecified times - during the vacation in Spain, there were casual mentions of Jake ‘returning from mass’.

One moment I’d like to examine in particular is the instance where Jake, Brett and the gang try to enter the church during the festival of San Fermin. The text reads: “They were all standing outside the chapel where San Fermin and the dignitaries had passed in, leaving a guard of soldiers.... We started inside and there was a smell of incense and people filing back into the church, but Brett was stopped just inside the door because she had no hat, so we went out again.. “ To me, this illustrates how Brett has been and continues to hold Jake back. Jake is stuck on Brett, and this prevents him from moving forward in his life. Her presence and romantic affairs are a constant reminder of his failure and injury.

Yet despite Jake’s attendance at church, it seems that bullfights serve to give him the meaning and sense of purpose that organized religion aims for. Jake knows everything and everyone in a bullfight, and is even part of the ‘legit’ aficionado club, despite being an American. Jake may not know what he’s working for in life, but he knows the goal of a bull fight and how things ought to happen. His objective during the contest is to judge the bullfighter, the bull, and how well the ideal ritual is carried out.  

Corrida de Toros also lines up with the passage of Ecclesiastes included in the beginning of The Sun Also Rises.  It reads: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever…” The ceremony of bullfighting is the same. A bull dies and is replaced, the torero dies and is replaced, even the audience changes, but the ritual remains. Taking part in this tradition allows Jake to be part of something far larger and far older than himself, a sentiment that religious services also produce.

The movement from Paris to Spain also resembles a religious pilgrimage. It happens at a set time, once every year, for a specific event - the festival of San Fermin, which is a religious event as well as an enormous party. However for Jake, the religious observance is not held in church, but in the streets where the bulls run, and the ring where they fight. The parallels with pilgrimage are also supported by the changes in Jake’s lifestyle; in Spain, everything has a heightened level of religious observance, and the style of his days are more in line with the idealized pastoral life. This is exemplified in Jake’s regular trips to church, and the fishing trip he takes with Bill, where the two of them can, for a moment, talk earnestly and without irony, where they only (ha!) bring two bottles of wine, and where Jake literally works in the soil to find the worms.

However, I find it odd that Jake has such a strong desire for religious experience and tie to the Catholic Church, and yet he doesn’t attend regularly except in Spain, and appears deeply ambivalent towards it. On the one hand, we have quotes about how Aloysius is “a good Catholic name,” and on the other hand there is the scene from the fishing trip, where Bill says: ”’Listen, Jake.... are you really a Catholic?’ ‘Technically.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘I don't know.’” As we have seen multiple times throughout the book, Jake does not have an issue with commitment - he has a steady job, reads the bullfighting paper every night and visits Spain every year, and is still caught up on Brett - if he goes to something on and off there’s probably something holding him back.

Near the beginning of the book, Jake is alone in his  bedroom pondering his wound. At one point he thinks:  “The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyway. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it.” Perhaps Jake blames the Church for not being able to help him when he needed it most, after the war when he was wounded and suffering. But I also think there’s a social component to Jake’s lapses of observance in Paris. In the modern, cynical, apathetic West Bank culture, it seems that religion is another old-world value that is ignored or slightly mocked. Take Cohn, for example, whose older principles set him apart from the others and earn their annoyance. Jake is already deeply insecure about his wound, and this manifests in his overcompensation in various ways to fit in with the group, nevertheless. Like all of us, Jake decides certain aspects of his identity to present and suppress, and among people in the West Bank he suppresses his religious identity to avoid mockery. Yet in Spain, people are more religious and different rules apply than in Paris, so Jake can freely go to church. There is also the simple physical problem of having to cut social obligations to attend church, which can alienate people.