He meets Salamano who is heartbroken after losing the dog he's always pretended to hate.Īt work, Meursault declines a transfer to Paris since 'nothing mattered.' When Marie asks if he wants to marry her, he says it makes no difference but he will if she wants. Later, Meursault agrees to Raymond's request that he testify to her infidelity. Next Saturday, Meursault and Marie hear Raymond beating his mistress. Pleased, Raymond now considers Meursault his friend. He gets Meursault to write a letter luring her back to shame her. Monday, Meursault's neighbor Raymond invites him to dinner and recounts his thirst for revenge on his mistress. Marie is startled to hear Meursault's mother just died. They swim, flirt, go to a comedy, and go home together. Saturday, Meursault goes to the beach and runs into Marie. They walk across the hot, shimmering landscape to church for the funeral, which Meursault barely remembers. Meursault's closest friend (and rumored fiancé).

Next morning, the funeral procession is joined by Thomas Pérez, Mme. They drink coffee and smoke together, then sit vigil over the coffin with his mother's friends, whose crying irritates the unemotional Meursault. Meursault goes to the mortuary and surprises the caretaker by declining to see his mother's body.

He tells Meursault he's arranged a religious funeral, in accordance with her wishes, though Meursault reflects privately that his mother wasn't religious. Meursault meets with the director of the home who quells Meursault's inner defensiveness about sending his mother away by assuring him she was happier at the home than she would have been in Algiers. The novel opens when he receives a telegram saying his mother has died. Meursault is a shipping clerk living in a decrepit Algiers apartment he shared with his mother before he sent her to an old people's home he rarely visits.

The outsider albert