Who is this Guy?

I feel like Meursault is the type of person who likes to keep his emotions bottled up where he does not let them show. He goes through the day uncaring and yet I feel that in his head many thoughts are going on but he does not dwell on them. After the funeral he is sitting and watching everyone go by and is merely observing their actions, sort of living through them. Yet he really only gives observations and I wonder what he is really thinking about. I wonder if he ever thought about joining them, actually going out and "living" instead of being passive and a spectator. I think while reading this book many people consider him to be a jerk because he is indifferent to his mother's death and goes through life detached. But I feel if everyone was to reflect on their lives there would be certain moments in which everyone was detached or indifferent to the world around them. I know I certainly do. If something is on my mind and I am trying to figure things out it can be seen as not really being involved in life but I am actually just trying to solve something. There are also the times where you feel like you just have to be alone. That another persons company is not wanted and that you just want to close your self to the outside world. This for me comes from being too stressed or that I feel very cramped with everyone always around me, even though one can argue that just because there may be many people in a room, you are still alone. So in a way I can relate to Meursault because no one really knows how one is going to act when a parent dies and I feel like because something happened in his life, he is unable to perhaps trust other people and himself because he can not be open.

I agree somewhat with what Vincent had brought up in class that the author was leaving Meursault so detached from the world so that the reader can be part of the story by bringing/ plugging in their own emotions. I can tell how someone can be reading and fill in their emotions to the lack of Meursaults. Although there are certain points in his life where I feel like I would go about it in the same way and even do it sometimes in my life. While he is talking to Salamano and Raymond about how their day had went or in gaining a friendship it felt to me that he was merely accommodating them, in both instances he felt nothing and said what he thought they wanted to hear, so that the conversation would not drag on any longer or that he would not have to add anything to the conversation. I often feel like at certain points I do that when I do not really like the person and so I am just trying to find a way out of it by merely saying what they want to hear. I also do that when I want to prevent any confrontation, I just put nothing forward like my thoughts and feelings so that nothing could be brought up that would cause a conflict. I guess in a way we are both being lazy and perhaps scared to actually show our true feelings because we do not know how they will be interpreted.