Stranger Journal 2

I chose to analyze Raymond Sintes. I think that Sintes is a great foil to Meursault. Meaursault is a man with a very few emotions other than annoyance, however Sintes is a man with many emotions. In this short chapter he reveales many emotions including jealousy, anger, and compassion. While Meursault and Sintes have their conversation, Meursault continues to have a small range of emotions. Meaursault shows very little sympathy towards Sintes, except for when, "he [Sintes] asked if I thought she was cheating on him, and it seemed to me she was; if I thought she should be punished and what I would do in his place, and I said you can't ever be sure, but I understood his wanting to punish her" (32). That "understanding" is the closest Meursault will get to sympathizing with Sintes. It is from the same quotation that we see that Sintes recognizes that lack of empathy in Meursault and Sintes attempts to pry it out of him by asking him directly what his feelings are. Meursault and Sintes are emotional opposites; Meaursault never even has emotions, while Sintes is full of emotions and his emotions are what control his actions. Camus uses the foil to further show the "disconnect" between Meursault and the rest of society when it comes to connecting emotionally to anything.