Question

Explain Mersaults response to the chaplain in their final meeting in the story.What does Mersault conclude about life as a result of this scene?How is this an expression of existentialist thought? Your answer should be at least 250 words.Can someone help me please..

Answer 1

Mersaults is condemned to die in terms of a "debt owe to society", but he only thinks about the opportunity of freedom and filing a legal appeal. Against his wishes the chaplain visits him and insists to Mersaults that all condemned men has to confort in God. Due chaplain insistence Mersaults becomes irritated and says that he has no time to waste with God.

At this point of his life, he believes that the whole thing in human existence is death. Now, in existentialist terms he takes his consciousness to the end: he observes his inevitable death while he sees his life having a past, present and future.

Finally he concludes that there's no difference of dying that day by execution or dying decades later by natural causes, so he dismisses the option of natural death or execution. However he creates an illusion of having the opportunity of other 20 years, but this only tortures him during the last hours of his life.