Summary: Chapter 4
[S]he asked me if I loved her. I told
her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
The following Saturday, Meursault goes swimming again
with Marie. He is intensely aroused from the first moment he sees
her. After the swim, they hurry back to Meursault’s apartment to
have sex. Marie spends the night and stays for lunch the following
day. Meursault tells her the story of Salamano and his dog, and
she laughs. Then Marie asks Meursault if he loves her. He replies
that, though “it [doesn’t] mean anything, he [doesn’t] think so.”
Meursault’s response makes Marie look sad.
Marie and Meursault can hear an argument in Raymond’s
apartment. The tenants of the building gather on the landing and
listen outside the door to the sounds of Raymond beating his mistress.
A police officer arrives. Raymond’s mistress informs the officer
that Raymond beat her and the cop slaps Raymond in the face. He
then orders Raymond to wait in his apartment until he is summoned
to the police station. Later that afternoon, Raymond visits Meursault in
his apartment. He asks Meursault to go to the police station to testify
that his mistress had cheated on him. Meursault agrees. After an
evening out, the two men return to their apartment building to find
Salamano desperately searching for his dog, who ran away from him
at the Parade Ground. Meursault says that if the dog is at the pound,
he can pay a fee to have it returned. Salamano curses the dog when
he hears this, but later that night, Meursault hears Salamano crying
in his room.
Summary: Chapter 5
I said that people never change their
lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that
I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Raymond’s friend Masson invites Meursault and Marie to
spend the following Sunday at his beach house with him, his wife,
and Raymond. Meursault’s boss offers him a position in a new office
he plans to open in Paris. Meursault replies that it is all the
same to him, and his boss becomes angry at his lack of ambition.
Meursault muses that he used to have ambition as a student, but
then realized that none of it really mattered.
Marie asks Meursault if he wants to marry her. Meursault
replies that it makes no difference to him. When she asks Meursault
if he loves her, he again replies that though it does not mean anything,
he probably does not love her. Marie thinks he is peculiar, but
decides that she wants to marry him nonetheless. She tells Meursault
that she cannot have dinner with him that night, and when he does
not ask why she laughs. Meursault eats dinner alone at Celeste’s,
where he notices a strange woman obsessively checking off radio
programs listed in a magazine. He follows her briefly when she leaves.
Meursault returns home and finds Salamano waiting outside
his door. Salamano says that he bought his dog in an effort to overcome the
loneliness he felt after his wife died, and that he does not want
to get a new dog because he is used to the old one. Salamano then expresses
his condolences for the death of Madame Meursault. He mentions that
some people in the neighborhood thought badly of Meursault for sending
her to the home, but he himself knew that Meursault must have loved
her very much. He returns to his own loss, saying that he does not
know what he will do without his dog. Its loss has changed his life
dramatically.
Analysis: Chapters 4–5
On the surface, Meursault appears to be an ordinary, lower
middle-class French colonial in Algeria, living a typical day-to-day
routine. He eats lunch in small cafés, attends films, and swims
during his free time. He is diligent but not exceptional at his
perfectly ordinary job. As of yet, he challenges nothing this society
hands him, and it challenges nothing in him. Meursault lives his
life almost unconsciously, nearly sleepwalking through a ready-made
structure that his society provides him.
