Why Did Mersault Shoot The Arab?

by Ethan Meanor

L’Etranger

The subject of free will is one which comes up often, and about which I think we can fairly say there is no consensus. Even the idea of what “will” is differs from one person to the next; the majority of people seem to have no clear idea of what they mean by such a word. Nor, indeed, do I. However, for our purposes here, will shall refer to a conscious intent or desire of an individual person, regardless whether he has the ability to actualize it. When we speak of his ability or inability to actualize his will, we are talking about choice. Does man have the ability to choose his actions? This is the question we are faced with. Do we imagine that the will is sovereign, unaffected by other factors? A grand arbiter over the chaos of biological and psychological factors? Perhaps such a thing exists; I do not know. But it does not seem likely.

In order to best illustrate this point, I will borrow the words and images of Albert Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 for his novel The Stranger,¹ first published in 1942 as L’Etranger. In it, he follows the life of Mersault, a working Frenchman. Mersault befriends another man, Raymond, who takes him and his girlfriend to the beach at Algiers, where he kills a man in cold blood. The reason for his crime is no more clear to him than to the authorities investigating the case; “why would he do it?” they wonder.

Indeed — why would he?

Did Mersault Choose To Shoot The Arab?

We are examining the point at which Mersault shoots the Arab in the context of time: this is a particular point in time, before which came others; what comes next is unknowable and, therefore, at least on a practical level, open. Mersault may shoot the Arab or he may not shoot the Arab; what decides this?

If we accept that there exists what is called “free choice,” the answer is obvious: Mersault. Mersault takes the gun from his pocket and fires five times, and chooses to do this based on rational principles. We cannot, I think, separate free choice from rationality: the idea that one can make a choice entails that one can consider the choice based on some rational (though not necessarily accurate) system. Upon what rationale does Mersault make this choice?

On the other hand, if we reject free choice, we find a much more elegant explanation. In a court of law, when a man stands accused of a crime, it is imperative to show a motive: “why did this man commit this act?” It is considered irrational to convict a man of a crime he had no reason to commit, because we assume that if someone does something, they have a reason for doing it. Mersault, on the other hand, seems to have no rational motivation for shooting the Arab. He stands to gain nothing from it that could possibly justify the consequences to a rational person.

In considering the text as well, being written from Mersault’s point of view, there is no indication of conscious consideration or rational choice: “Every nerve in my body was a steel spring, and my grip closed on the revolver. The trigger gave, and the smooth underbelly of the butt jogged my palm,” (76). He describes the events as if they are happening to him rather than being performed by him. He seemingly has no idea what he is about to do until he does it.

Where is his free choice?

Why Did Mersault Shoot The Arab?

If we accept that Mersault did not make a free choice in shooting the Arab, we also assume the difficulty of explaining why he did it. Any reasonable person, in my view, would have to say that the answer to this question is unknowable, and indeed it is. We cannot observe what occurred in Mersault’s mind, apart from what Camus writes about him. We can go into no depth of detail with any certainty, and I wish to make this clear at the outset.

However, as I am standing against the common assumption of free will, in order to justify my argument I must provide an alternative theory which wholly explains the situation. It is a fine thing to assert that Mersault had no free choice and then to say that the true explanation is unknowable. The scenario I present here is the best analysis that I can give of Mersault’s actions from a deterministic perspective, and I feel that it explains them far better than the assumption of free will.

Mersault was a human being, and as a human being he has biological instincts. Some of these are peculiar to humans, while some are shared with many species. There are biological and psychological factors at play in every situation, and the most primitive are also the strongest, adapting to changes in social structure rather than disappearing. I am speaking specifically about the “fight or flight” response, which is observable in all of us. When threatened with danger, we must make a quick decision whether to attempt to overcome it or to flee. This instinct has been honed because it works: slower decisions mean quicker deaths, quicker decisions mean longer life. This being so, the amount of time this decision takes is quite obviously too small to be considered conscious thought. When where is no time to reason, we act.

It was a particular set of circumstances that put Mersault in that situation at that moment. He had encountered the Arabs twice before, and they had threatened his friend Raymond. These confrontations establish the primal nature of the interaction between these parties: both begin with a standoff and escalate to a fight-or-flight scenario. The first encounter (67-69) ends in a fight, with Raymond being injured before the Arabs are forced to flee. After he has seen a doctor, Raymond and Mersault walk down the beach and encounter the Arabs again, lounging in the shade near a stream (70-72). There is a standoff again, during which Mersault attempts multiple times to dissuade Raymond from doing violence, even saying it would be “a low-down trick” to shoot the Arab in cold blood (71).² It is clear at this point that Mersault has no strong desire to harm the Arabs, (seemingly no desire at all), and is relieved when they flee (72). It is important to note that at this point, Raymond has given Mersault the gun. These two confrontations, both being strong fight-or-flight scenarios, with definite overtones of vying for dominance, have set the Arabs as a danger in Mersault’s mind. This will be crucial to the final outcome.

After returning to the house with Raymond, Mersault decides he does not want to go inside and make conversation with the women; instead, he walks back down the beach in the searing heat, with no particular intention of where he is going (72-73). The gun is still in his pocket. As he continues to walk and the heat continues to disorient him, he reaches again the point where he and Raymond had seen the Arabs. One has returned, and is lounging in the shade (74).

This is when Mersault begins to feel stress. He is thirsty, confused, light-headed, and suffering from heat exhaustion. It is a long walk back to the house, and he desperately wants to sit in the shade and drink from the stream: to fulfil basic needs for survival. The stress, however, is the result of the Arab, who has been established as a dangerous enemy, sitting next to the stream. The Arab looks at him, but does not move. Mersault knows he cannot approach safely, though his survival instinct demands it; the Arab, likewise, knows he cannot safely stay, but will not leave. To communicate this point, he draws his knife and holds it, staring back at Mersault, who is holding the gun (75). It becomes a standoff, with neither party willing to back down – just as it is when wild animals vie for resources. The heat and confusion have have made Mersault delirious, and as far as he is concerned, the Arab is an immediate threat to his life.

In a standoff, the stress continues to build until it reaches the point of panic. This is the point at which the standoff must be broken and action taken. This is when the fight-or-flight decision must be made, and for Mersault it is an impossible choice. The Arab does not have a strong enough position to cause Mersault to flee, nor will he flee himself.³ By the same token, the Arab cannot attack: Mersault wields a gun, and he only a knife.

Because he cannot flee, when his panic rises to the point of action, Mersault has only one choice: to shoot.

“The door of my undoing.”

“I knew I’d shattered the balance of the day, the spacious calm of this beach on which I had been happy. But I fired four more shots into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace,” (76).

That is what Mersault said to himself at the outset of his final encounter with the Arab. He held no real ill will toward the man, nor did the Arab present any threat to his life; he stood to gain nothing from what he did, and to lose everything — and he knew it. There is no point in the text at which Mersault becomes angry with the Arab, or declares any intent to harm him. Neither does he take any real initiative to do so, waiting several minutes after approaching. He is thinking about the heat, about the shade, the water, and about the survival situation the Arab presented to him, a situation he would have liked to avoid. But that was not the way it happened for Mersault; he did not choose to kill a man, but kill a man he did.

“And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing,” (76).

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¹ Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Knopf, 1967.

² It is interesting that Mersault should attempt to dissuade Raymond from violence in the first place, but it is even more interesting that he would appeal to such a standard. Mersault is portrayed as a character who is detached and somewhat emotionless, and it seems it would be more in his nature to watch the act occur without trying to stop it: he wouldn’t see the use. Nor would he, I think, see that it mattered the slightest bit whether Raymond shot the Arab in cold blood or not. Whatever his reasons for dissuading Raymond in this fashion, I think it is a point that merits further consideration.

³ The motivation of the Arab is problematic here, but we know very little about him compared with Mersault. While we are inside the head of the latter, the Arab is, from our perspective, merely an “outside entity.” Accordingly, this is how I have treated the Arab in this essay: as a deterministic factor which influences Mersault (and of course as the victim of his crime). Obviously one could question the factors that led to the Arab being there, and that influenced him to act the way he did — this is reasonable, but it is also unknowable and, I would argue, unnecessary to the argument presented here.