Mom passed away today, maybe yesterday, I don’t know. This is the classic beginning of "The Outsider." At the beginning of the first chapter, Meursault’s mother passed away and the funeral was held the next day. Meursault took leave and took a car to attend the funeral in a city 80 kilometers away. He was drowsy along the way, and when he arrived at the morgue of the nursing home, his mother's coffin had been nailed and placed in the middle. It was a simple room painted with white plaster. Apart from the coffin, there were only a few chairs. The porter came in and started talking to Meursault. He handed Meursault a cup of coffee, and Meursault gave him a cigarette. They were chatting aimlessly in this pale room, and the light shining on the white walls was uncomfortable. Meursault then falls asleep, and when he wakes up, mourners are filing in, maybe ten of them. They were all my mother's friends from the nursing home, and they walked in silently, not even making a sound as they sat in their chairs. He doesn't know who they are, and they don't tell Meursault. People sat and mourned, some cried, but they said nothing.
The judge collapsed. She took out a cross from the drawer, trembling. She didn't like the cross on Meursault's face. He shouted and asked, "Do you believe in God?" Meursault said he didn't believe it, and the judge completely lost his mind and shouted: Are you going to make my life meaningless? Then he plopped down in the chair. How to understand this reaction of the judge? He is actually expressing a fear, a fear of pure phenomena. Meursault did not lie. He described the whole story strictly and honestly, but the lack of logic in reality was unacceptable and even scary. In addition to the judge, Meursault also met with his lawyer. The lawyer told her that investigators learned from the nursing home that Meursault acted insensitively on the day his mother was buried. He said that if you don't take notes, it will be very detrimental to you. The lawyer tried to persuade Meursault and asked him, "Did you feel pain that day?" Meursault found it difficult to answer. He said, "There is no doubt that I love my mother very much." But that doesn't mean anything. It's another thing that all healthy people have wished in one way or another the death of their loved ones. He was so agitated that he interrupted Mosso and asked him to promise not to say these words in court. The conflict between Mosso and his lawyers was really a conflict of facts and rights. Meursault does not understand the concept of expediency. How can a man without desires understand expediency? So the lawyer asked him, can you say that although you seem numb, you are actually controlling your instincts. Meursault says he can't because it's not true. The lawyer became furious and left the interrogation room on the spot. A few days later, the trial began.
The court's trial of Meursault is based on the premise that no one understands reality. Why Meursault killed people, the judge didn't understand, the lawyer didn't understand, Meursault himself didn't understand, and the readers didn't understand either. For this reason, we say that the outsider's story is a logical judgment of the phenomenon. The law requires justice, justice requires reasons, and reasons require logic. All dialogues start on this premise. To impose logic on reality, the prosecution and defense developed different versions of the story, with the exchange focusing not on the details of the murder itself but on the funeral of Mureso's mother. From a normal person's perspective, the reasoning is not complicated. In the absence of an obvious motive, the prosecution can only explain Morissot as a cold-blooded murderer. In order to convince the jury, the prosecution must prove that he has no morals. So if you are the defense, how should you defend? In fact, your job is very difficult because the defendant doesn't care at all how others interpret his story. He just nods and shakes his head coldly and answers questions briefly, seemingly without any normal human emotions at all. So in court, the lawyer did not let Meursault speak from beginning to end. In fact, it was obviously for the purpose of protecting him. In his defense statement, the lawyer told the court that Meursault was a model son who did his best to support his mother and how about sending her to a nursing home where better care could be provided. When he got excited, he blurted out: Yes, I killed someone. Every time Meursault is mentioned next, the lawyer will use me instead, as if Meursault is himself. This is an interesting detail because the lawyer is defending not Meursault himself, but himself. This is his own belief in legal common sense and rational thinking. He has no way to defend the real Meursault, because the real Meursault is on an unfathomable and ineffable level. The lawyer's approach did play a role in protecting him, but he also ignored the facts. What about the prosecutor? They got evidence from Ramon that he was a pimp, and they told the court that Meursault did his dirty deeds the day after his mother's death. Meursault's lawyers jumped to their feet and shouted: Should we try him for murder or for burying his biological mother? Of course, his own defense is to prove how much Meursault loved his mother. The prosecutor's answer is that there is a deep, tragic and essential connection between the two incidents. The prosecution's argument points out a problem for us, ah, the trial of the outsider is not a legal trial, but a philosophical trial. Meursault was put on trial not only by the judge and accusers, but also by his own lawyers, and by readers.
In fact, the more you try to read the outsider in conventional terms, the more you feel that your act of filling in the text with meaning is a false certainty, like that of the priest. Only when you truly put the lie behind the truth and admit that this book does not make sense in the traditional sense can you be shocked by this book. Then you will understand why I say that breaking hypocrisy is the only possibility for happiness in contemporary life. --Excerpted from the video "I am Yellow Duck Brother". I wrote it in text with only minor modifications!