The Stranger "The End"

In these final pages the real Mersault was revealed to the reader. I finally understood why Mersault acted the way he did, it was after that, that he stopped being such a pitiful man. Its curious how through half of my blogs I commented on what a shallow and selfish persona Mersault was, and on the other half I would write about his possible improvement. Trough out this book I’ve learned to love and to hate Mersault. I would always get my hopes up thinking that maybe he had feelings and that he did care about life but he always ended up doing something that would ruin my happy endings. Although it might sound harsh, the book did have a happy ending, not the one that I was expecting but at least he ended up expressing what he felt about life and how his was coming to an end. "For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiance,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again… really- I felt like I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate." (122)
This quote answers a question I have always asked myself about Mersault. Does he still have hope and will he ever change? Indeed he did change, we finally saw how the real Mersault was like, and even though his life ended when he was executed the hope that I had on him wasn’t a waste.