There is an interesting juxtaposition on pages 6, 7 and 9.
From p6: "Near the casket was an Arab nurse in a white smock, with a brightly colored scarf on her head."
From p7: "At that point the caretaker said to me, "She's got an abscess." I didn't understand, so I looked over at the nurse and saw that she had a bandage wrapped around her head just below the eyes. Where her nose should have been, the bandage was flat. All you could see of her face was the whiteness of the bandage."
From p9: "That's when Maman's friends came in. There were about ten in all... I saw them more clearly than I had ever seen anyone, and not one detail of their faces or their clothes escaped me."
I'm having a hard time believing this last claim... in this first chapter, Meursault seems more aware of his inanimate surroundings then the persons he encounters... his encounter with the Arab nurse seems to evidence this, so I'm curious what happened in the brief period in between the nurse and the entry of Maman's friends may have changed his perceptiveness / lack thereof? Or is it that he didn't really perceive Maman's friends as 'persons' per se, but only noticed them in a physical, surface-only sense? If so, is that really anything to flaunt, to note that he "...saw them more clearly than I had ever seen anyone"?
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There is an interesting juxtaposition on pages 6, 7 and 9.
From p6: "Near the casket was an Arab nurse in a white smock, with a brightly colored scarf on her head."
From p7: "At that point the caretaker said to me, "She's got an abscess." I didn't understand, so I looked over at the nurse and saw that she had a bandage wrapped around her head just below the eyes. Where her nose should have been, the bandage was flat. All you could see of her face was the whiteness of the bandage."
From p9: "That's when Maman's friends came in. There were about ten in all... I saw them more clearly than I had ever seen anyone, and not one detail of their faces or their clothes escaped me."
I'm having a hard time believing this last claim... in this first chapter, Meursault seems more aware of his inanimate surroundings then the persons he encounters... his encounter with the Arab nurse seems to evidence this, so I'm curious what happened in the brief period in between the nurse and the entry of Maman's friends may have changed his perceptiveness / lack thereof? Or is it that he didn't really perceive Maman's friends as 'persons' per se, but only noticed them in a physical, surface-only sense? If so, is that really anything to flaunt, to note that he "...saw them more clearly than I had ever seen anyone"?
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