Journal #4-The Stranger

I think there is a definite change in character of Mersault between Part one and Part Two. In part one, Mersault seems very persuadable, for example, when Raymond invites him to the beach he says no but after some persuasion on Raymond's part, he agrees to attend. In Part two, Mersault speaks with his                                     magistrate, "I made it appear as if I agreed. To my surprise, he acted triumphant. 'You see, you see!' he said. 'You do believe, don't you, and you're going to put your trust in Him, aren't you?' Obviously, I again said no. He fell back in his chair" (Camus, 69) In this passage his magistrate tries to convince him into Christianity and accepting Christ as his savior, as Mersault says he usually agrees when he wants someone to stop talking, he goes on with his first "No" and never goes back on it, making him not as easily persuadable as he was in Part one. Another way he has changed is that he is more descriptive and uses greater word choices than before. When before, he never really went into detail about much or acted as if he cared about anything at all, In Part two, he starts noticing the smaller details and using a bigger vocabulary when he speaks about his thoughts. He describes his magistrate to the que of what he looked like and his thoughts about him. "I looked at him and saw a tall, fine-featured manwith deep-set blue eyes, a long gray moustache, and lots of thick, almost white hair. He struck me as being very reasonable and, overall, quite pleasant, despite a nervous tic which made his mouthtwitch now and then" (Camus, 64)