The Outcasts: The Stranger And Notes From Underground

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The Outcasts: The Stranger and Notes from Underground In The Stranger by Albert Camus and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, we can see that the main characters in both novellas are outcasts; however, they are outcasts in different ways. In The Stranger, Monsieur Meursault is an outcast because he is indifferent to people’s feelings and to what happens in the world. In Notes from Underground, the unnamed narrator is an outcast because he has difficulty communicating with people. Unlike Monsieur Meursault, the narrator of Dostoyevsky’s novel is not indifferent to people or the world because he wants to be accepted and loved; whereas Monsieur Meursault does not care about what others think about him and he is unable to show any emotion. In Notes from Underground, the narrator shows emotion from the beginning of the story. He begins by telling the readers “I’m… a mean man” (84). By describing himself as a mean man lets the reader know that he is capable of showing emotion. However, the emotion he portrays throughout the novella is always anger at the world because he never felt loved by anyone. The only way he can demonstrate his feelings is by being angry at the world and mean. He says, “when petitioners came to my desk for information, I snarled at them and felt indescribably happy whenever I managed to make one of them feel miserable” (85). We can see that to the narrator making people feel miserable is a way to get a reaction from them and it is also empowering to have people have such a stronger reaction toward him and the things he does. Throughout the story, we can see that the unnamed narrator of Notes from Underground has trouble communicating with people. We can see this when he invites himself to the party his old school friends were throwing to a person whom he did not even like. This also shows how desperate he is to be accepted and
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