Considering Meursault's Psychological State While Assessing His Guilt

An interesting question we debated in class today was how guilty Meursault is for his actions. Was the murder his fault, or was it the sun that caused him to do it?

In short, I don’t think it was either. The sun doesn’t have a voice that can tell Meursault what to do, and it doesn’t have arms to move Meursault’s body and force his hand to pull the trigger of a gun. On the other hand, I don’t think Meursault made a logically driven, conscious choice to murder him. Despite the sequential, detailed, and hauntingly emotionless account of events we are given, I think something more complex was happening to Meursault. There seem to be deeper psychological causes of his actions, which Meursault would not have had the ability to recognize in himself and narrate.

If we are going to trust Meursault’s account of what happened, and we do at this point because Meursault has been painted as a reliable and honest narrator, then examining what Meursault describes leading up to the point when he pulls the trigger can be helpful in understanding what was happening to him.

He gives crisp and cutting descriptions of his sun-induced experiences.

• “The sun was starting to burn my cheeks… my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin.”
• “The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead.”
• “... The sweat in my eye-brows dripped down over my eyelids all at once and covered them with a warm, thick film. My eyes were blinded behind the curtain of tears and salt.”
• “All I could feel were cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead…”
• “The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes.”
• “The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath.”
• “It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire.”

In these moments, Meursault is clearly in a state of incredible suffering. This is not a “normal” experience. It is possible; one might experience sensations of similar severity if they were in a room full of mirrors that was on fire, and extremely bright, hot lasers were reflected everywhere. But those aren’t the conditions of Meursault’s environment in these moments. As far as his surroundings go, it is simply a sunny day at the beach. What he experiences is not a result of his environment, which does not naturally induce the incredibly intense and violent sensations Meursault experiences.

Therefore, I think it's possible that Meursault may be experiencing the effects of a severe mental breakdown. Meursault’s demonstrated detachment from morality and general indifference already indicates that he has some kind of psychological disorder. In class, we discussed the possibility that he suffers from depression. He also experiences flashbacks to events related to traumatic events also involving the sun, and on this day, he seems to be hallucinating because what he experiences isn’t what’s really happening, or at least it isn’t a normal reaction to his environmental circumstances. What he experiences at the end of chapter six actually reminds me a lot of Septimus’ severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And if this is true that Meursault may be suffering from a psychological disorder, why do we discuss his guilt as though he is someone who does not have one?

I think it’s crucial to keep this in mind as we discuss his actions. While homicide is of course inexcusable and is always morally wrong, I think it’s imperative to consider that Meursault may have been experiencing severe effects of a psychological disorder.