Rodrigo A. Taipe IB English 11 Mr.

Jameson November 28, 2011 The Stranger Part One- Chapter 6: pages 58-59 The sun was starting to burn my cheeks, and I could feel drops of sweat gathering in my eyebrows. The sun was the same it had been the day Id buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin. It was this burning, which I couldnt stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldnt get the sun off me by stepping forward. But I took a step, one step, and forward. And this time, without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun. The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead. At the same instant the sweat in my eyebrows 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 the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me. The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes. That's when everything began to reel. 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. My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.

The Strangers Climax

In this passage from The Stranger, Albert Camus portrays Meursault as his fortune takes him to killing the Arab. Meursault's friend Raymond had earlier began a fight with an Arab who had problems with Raymond's conduct toward his sister. Without explaining, Meursault goes away from the beach house and wanders upon the Arab once again and shoots him. At this moment, Part One is approaching to an end, and a transformation is going to happen in the story. Camus creates a suspenseful tone here by using, hyperbolic adjectives, sound imagery, and literary devices. His use of language shows the tremendous effect the environment has on a beach and in the unemotional feeling Meursault experiences instantly after forever changing his life.

At the beginning of the passage, Meursault says that the sun is identical as it had been the day [he had] buried Maman (Camus 58). In the First Chapter, Meursault describes the heat in his mothers burial as insupportable but he never shown any emotion. Now, in the shore, he is finally showing the feelings (anger/sadness) that he repressed during his mother burial and lashes them out. The intensity of sunlight and heat triggers Meursaults repressed feelings. This torrent of emotions and his attempt to escape of the heat makes him move forward. The sunlight reflected in the knife of the Arab gives him an excuse to end the Arabs life. The knife and the Arab now personify the sunlight that is hurting Meursault by cutting his forehead. The verb cutting intensifies the pain that Meursault feels and gives a suspenseful mood to the passage.

Now that Meursault is blind by the pain, he cannot be himself, and now he is drive by his emotions only. This is shown when he says, My eyesblinded behind the curtain of tears and salt (Camus 59). The tears and salt are personifications of Meursault emotions that blind him and forbid him of thinking logically. He keeps going by humanizing the sea with a thick, fiery breath and that the sky has split open from end to end to rain down fire. These two phrases reflect the conventional portrayals of Hell, as if the shore were a blazing Hades. Another example is "the dazzling spear." Camus takes an ordinary item with no importance and presents it with great importance on the passage. A spear is injurious, but Meursault sees a "dazzling" spear, which gives an insight into Meursaults mind, because a person can observe the spear just as Meursault is doing. Another example is the "scorching" blade, which mirrors the sunlight that burns Meursault. Camus takes the reflection of sunlight and turns it into "scorching." Again, Camus exaggerates the properties of nature. The phrase "exceptional silence" is also curious. The adjective "exceptional" gives an enormous feel of suspense to the passage. All of these adjectives are superlative adjectives that give the passage more suspense and build-up. He takes a simple idea and emphasizes it by exploiting an excessively suspenseful adjective.

Camus uses wording in the passage to create sound imagery. He uses words and phrases that make sounds as a method to offer a suspenseful tone. For instance, "cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead" is an allegory that has sound imagery (Camus 59). Here, it can imagine the sounds made by the crashing of symbols. In a musical piece, the cymbals are use to create a great sensation of suspense and loudening in the musical line. Also, he uses the cymbals to produce sound imagery and increasing anxiety.

Camus uses the verb "shattered" in the phrase "shattered the harmony of the day" to create a similar suspense (Camus 59). The word "harmony" is a mellow and serene word; On the other hand, the verb "shattered" is a noisy analogous to the clang of the cymbals. This is a contrast of both words and the feelings that they produce. Also, he uses the word "knocking" to provide a realistic feeling of being present in the act. This "knock" is an allegory for the shootings and gives a sensation of a piercing, tough sound. The sound imagery establishes a suspense-filled mood in the story and provides an efficient crescendo to the story.

Camus uses several literary devices such as personification, hyperbole, and similes to help comprehend the extent of Meursault's observations in order to capture the hyperboles he uses. The phrase, "The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath" is an illustration of personification use by him (Camus 59). The sea does not have a thick, fiery breath, but by giving it humanoid features, it can be comprehend the extreme environment that Meursault perceives. The extreme nature of the personification and the darkness of the adjective like "fiery" add to the rising action. Likewise, the phrase, "It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire" shows the same extreme depiction (Camus 59).

This phrase allows to comprehend that things in Meursault's opinion, are abnormal and this intensifies the rising suspense just as the personification does. Another example is the simile "it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness" (Camus 59). This phrase associates the sound of shootings to the sound of knocking on a door. Hearing the knocking on a door has an enigmatic and suspenseful tone, because the self

who is on the other side is still strange. Camus' simile offers the same suspense and secrecy to this passage. The simile gives a threatening end to a suspenseful passage.

In conclusion, this passage is the climax of The Stranger, and it is the finale of the first of two parts of the novel. The fact that it is the finale of the first half of the novel obliges it to be full of suspense. This is reason why Camus creates a suspenseful tone in this passage using hyperbolic adjective phrases, sound imagery, and a variety of literary devices. He uses overly exaggerated phrases such as "dazzling spear" and "exceptional silence" to highlight certain features of Meursault's thoughts which in themselves give suspense to the passage. Also, Camus uses sound imagery such as "cymbals of sunlight crashing" to give the passage his own crescendo.

Ultimately, Camus uses the literary devices of personification, hyperbole, and similes to show even more exaggeration, which in-turn contributes to the suspenseful mood of the passage. The apparently chaotic state that Meursault is dealing with while he walks down the shore, unaware to the fortune he will ultimately suffer, is show by the snobberies and overly-exaggerate nature of the writing style use by Camus. It successfully gives the final lines of Part One the necessary suspense.