Nature’s Overwhelming Power over Mersault (Rewrite) For most people, the environment can have an effect on your mood and your actions. However, for Mersault, the main character from Albert Camus’ The Stranger, the effect that nature has on him is so tremendous that it influences him to act irrationally, inappropriately, and illegally. Camus uses literary techniques and devices, when describing Mersault’s killing of the Arab, to highlight the extraordinary effect that his physical stimuli have on him. It is important to understand the effect that Mersault’s setting has on him because it alludes to Mersault’s irrational and absurd character. One way that Camus uses literary techniques and devices to emphasize the astonishing effect that nature …show more content…
When Mersault starts his return to the beach, Meursault expresses that “the sea gasped for air” because of the “dazzling red glare” coming from the sun (57). This personification creates imagery of the sea, which can be alluded to heaven, being harmed by the sun, which can be alluded to heaven, especially the red glare of the sun because red can often be viewed as a hostile and devilish color. Next, when Mersault is having his initial confrontation with the Arab, Mersault says his environment manifest a “fiery air” (58). Most people would describe hell as also containing a “fiery air” so Mersault’s environment in this scene can be seen as a metaphor to the environment of hell. During his quarrel with the Arab, Mersault proclaims that the sea now “carried a thick, fiery breath”(59). The sea’s taking up of the fire trickling throughout Mersault’s environment alludes to an overtaking of heaven by hell. This allusion reveals that the harmful effects that Mersault gains from his environment overpower the ethical effects, therefore causing him to act violently. Also during their encounter, Mersault describes the sky as having “split open from one end to the other to rain down fire” (59). The imagery from Mersault’s description almost completely correlates with most descriptions of hell. Imagery, metaphors, and allusions are all used to compare Mersault’s environment to hell and because Mersault believes that his environment is similar to hell it is easily discerned why his environment has such a negative effect on