Collaboration=Meursault

In the first part of The Stranger, I think that you can see many parallels to France during World War II. Specifically, I think Meursault represents The Collaboration in France, and Raymond would be like the Nazi Germans.

The Collaboration in France was the group that decided to help the Germans in efforts to help themselves. They were officially neutral, but they did a lot to help the Germans. Meursault seemed like he always tried to act neutral, but he ended up helping Raymond. As time went on, the collaboration became more involved like Meursault who went from writing a letter for Raymond, to testifying as a witness for Raymond, to agreeing to help Raymond in fights, and he ends will killing the Arab. The Collaboration, similarly, wanted at first to be neutral, then they started helping the Germans round up Jews and put them in camps. They, at first, tried to only put foreign Jews into camps (because they wanted to protect French Jews), but that changed over time. 

We think that Meursault shouldn’t have helped Raymond because then there wouldn’t be any problems, but he did. Similarly, the holocaust in France would have been on a smaller scale if they didn’t collaborate because the Germans in the beginning didn’t have the resources in France for all of the roundups. 

In one fight on the beach, Meursault tells Raymond not to shoot and takes the gun away from him, but later he uses the gun himself and killed the Arab. This is like how the Collaboration didn’t want to put Jews into camps, but later, the initial camps were made by the French, not the Germans, they did it without pressure from the Germans. In some cases, they were even worse than the Germans – one example is the camp Drancy and how some say that after the Germans took over started running it, the camp conditions improved. Raymond, as we know of, didn’t kill anybody, but Meursault did. 

Both Meursault and the Collaboration said they were neutral, but as time went on, they became less passive. They became morally compromised and they actively participated. I think the parallels between the Collaboration and Meursault could be Albert Camus’ criticism of the Collaboration, because we know he was part of the Resistance. He might be criticizing how the Collaborators were like Meursault. Meursault didn’t intervene when Salamano beats his dog, he wrote a letter for Raymond, he didn’t really seem to care that Raymond beat his girlfriend, and he does other things to help Raymond. Camus might be wanting to say that you should take action and prevent bad things from happening. Also, the title of the book is The Strangerso could Camus be saying that is strange how people can say they’re neutral but then kill people?