Meursault, the novel rsquo s narrator and protagonist, receives a telegram telling him that his mother has died. Meursault asks his boss for two days rsquo leave from work to attend the funeral. His boss grudgingly grants the request, and makes meursault feel almost guilty for asking. Meursault catches the two o rsquo clock bus to marengo, and sleeps for nearly the entire trip. When meursault arrives, he meets with the director of the old persons rsquo home, who assures meursault that he should not feel bad for having sent his mother there. The director asserts that it was the best decision meursault could have made, given his modest salary. He tells meursault that a religious funeral has been planned for his mother, but meursault knows that his mother never cared about religion.

After the brief conversation, the director takes meursault to the small mortuary where his mother rsquo s coffin has been placed. The caretaker rushes in and offers to open the casket, but meursault tells him not to bother. To meursault rsquo s annoyance, the caretaker then stays in the room, chatting idly about his life and about how funeral vigils are shorter in the countryside because bodies decompose more quickly in the heat. The caretaker offers him a cup of coffee, and, in turn, meursault gives the caretaker a cigarette. He is awakened by the sound of his mother rsquo s friends from the old persons rsquo home shuffling into the mortuary. The next morning, the day of the funeral, meursault again meets with the director of the old persons rsquo home. The director asks meursault if he wants to see his mother one last time before the coffin is sealed permanently, but meursault declines.

The director tells meursault about thomas perez, the only resident of the home who will be allowed to attend the funeral. Perez and meursault rsquo s mother had become nearly inseparable before she died. When one of the undertaker rsquo s assistants asks meursault if his mother was old, meursault responds vaguely because he does not know her exact age.

He notices that thomas perez cannot keep up, and keeps falling behind the procession. A nurse tells meursault that he will get sunstroke if he walks too slowly, but will work up a sweat and catch a chill in church if he walks too quickly. Rdquo he remembers little of the funeral, aside from perez rsquo s tear soaked face and the fact that the old man fainted from the heat. As he rides home on the bus to algiers, meursault is filled with joy at the prospect of a good night rsquo s sleep. the journal of camus studies formerly the journal of the albert camus society.

It is the custom, in his culture, for the bereaved to sit all night in vigil by the coffin of the departed loved one. At the vigil and during the funeral the following day he shows no grief, sadness or even regret. He only feels the physical inconvenience of sitting through the vigil and the heat of the sun during the funeral procession to the cemetery. At the funeral he makes mental notes of the physical objects that strike his eye shining screws in the walnut coffin, the colours on the dresses of the nurses and the large bellies of the elderly mourners.

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The following day, back in algiers, meursault goes swimming in the sea and meets a girl, marie, whom he knows vaguely. That evening they go to the cinema together to see a comedy afterwards they go back to meursault's appartment to have sex. A relationship, of sorts, develops during which meursault shows no more feeling or affection towards marie than he displayed at his mother's funeral. One day she asks meursault to marry her and he accepts advising her that it's all the same to him whether they marry or not.

He works in an office in algiers, taking little interest in his career and receiving with disinterest the news of a prospective promotion and the transfer to paris that accompanies the rise in position. He is more interested in the physical sensations to be found at work such as enjoying the cool freshness of the hand towels at mid day and comparing this feeling to the warm clamminess of the same towels by the end of the day. At home, as well as his relationship with marie, he develops a relationship with his unsavoury neighbour, raymond sintes, a gangster who beats women. Meursault is as disinterested in the friendship with sintes and he is with his romance with marie. One day, this friendship leads him to a beach where he kills an arab with five shots of sintes' revolver.

The two men had come across the arab and his friends earlier in the day and a fight had broken out, one of the arabs had a knife. Later on meursault is walking alone on the beach and comes across one of the arabs. The sun on his head and the flash on that sun on the blade of the arab's knife somehow results in meursault killing the man with a single shot and then firing four more bullets into the inert body.

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