Reflection

I changed a lot in terms of my writing this year. It wasn't because of the format, the class, or anything like that, it was just because my skills improved with practice. I am a little more excited about reading, but that's just part of my natural ebb and flow. i have become a less informal writer and have used an actual structural format much more frequently. I think it's because I've learned to write what the teacher wants to see. Mr Evans was cool with any format and my informality in my essays and had us write timed essays. So, I rewrote what I could without a structure and used my speaking voice to write. With Dr Forman I knew he wanted us to use structure and have good examples and we had mostly take-home essays, so I took my time and used structure and plotted out my points more clearly. Really, though p, I don't think I've changed much. I've gained valuable insight into how college will be for me and how to read well for college and how to write in a manner that teachers like, but I had that propensity within me already. I guess, then, that this class brought out the skills I'll need for college earlier. This is because of my teacher (and not the details of class he taught), who made me write and read as though I was in college.

Possible essay title

Game of moans: a song of passion and isolation

(Reference to game of thrones)

works cited

Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. e-book.

Conclusion

The Stranger is about the final months of a man only called Mersault who finds himself constantly outcast by society. Mersault starts a relationship with Marie, and they match the relationship paradigm almost perfectly. They feel the traditional emotions toward each other, they plan on getting married, and they display the remorse and morbitity one would expect after a break-up. This, however, separates them from the rest of society because no other love-based relationships around Mersault are "normal." Their relationship also actively pushes Marie and Mersault to the fringes of society: they get into their own little world with each other, they have a strange love dynamic with an unofficial engagement, and they had the arrange at first date ever. No matter what Mersault does, he ends up an outcast, and this is Camus' design. He made Mersault an outcast because that's how he and his readership feel, and in the end he wanted to make us feel happy with life and understand the need for ostracism and something else. I need to fix that last sentence but I don't have enough time

Second body

Mersault and Marie's relationship is peculiar in the way it makes them treat others and appear to the world, thus isolating them. When Mersault is in prison, Marie writes to and visits him. Their encounter when Marie visits him forces the reader to see the ostracism their relationship brings them. "Already pressed up against the grate, she was smiling her best smile for me. I thought she looked very beautiful, but I didn’t know how to tell her... We stopped talking and Marie went on smiling. The fat woman yelled to the man next to me, her husband probably" (81). Marie and Mersault aren't loud like the other couples, rather they are filled with love for each other, and this is their only opportunity to express and embrace that love. However, all of the other prisoners express their love by shouting empty words at each other. Marie and Mersault's traditional love, then, sets them apart from others and forces them into their own little bubble. Their relationship is not entirely normal, though, and some of its aspects even alienate the reader. "That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn’t mean anything but that I probably didn’t love her" (50). Their marriage is neither confirmed not entirely consensual, they do not love each other equally, and they have trouble verbalizing their feelings for each other. This sets theirs apart from almost all relationships becaus of it's abnormality and alienates the reader because of the strange and unequal love equilibrium. During Mersault's trial his prosecutor uses his relationship with Marie to illustrate his moral downfalls, and thus his guilt. He said "after his mother’s death, this man was out swimming, starting up a dubious liaison, and going to the movies, a comedy, for laughs" (101). The fact of the matter is that all of this hips true: he did do all of these dubious things that indicate a lack of emotion. But that's just the nature of Mersault and Marie's relationship: their love blocks out everything around them, including sorrow. Unfortunately, it does not prevent them from seeming strange to the world and estranging them from it, so continuing the motif that originated with the title: The Stranger. Boom! Second body