How Privacy Invasion is Significant in the Outsider and Metamorphosis

How Privacy Invasion is Significant in the Outsider and Metamorphosis

How Privacy Invasion is Significant in the Outsider and Metamorphosis
According to the Oxford dictionary, privacy is the state of being alone and not watched or disturbed by people or the environment. The privacy of the two protagonists, Gregor and Meursault, is disturbed throughout the twp novels. In Camus’s The Outsider, Meursault who lives in Algiers kills an Arab partly due to a friend’s conflict, but mainly due to the absurd disturbance to his privacy by the sun/environment. Meursault’s actions result in his imprisonment, which intimately exposes his privacy and believes to further disturbance. In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman and his family's sole breadwinner, wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a beetle. His absurd, overnight transformation exposes his privacy to be disturbed by the environment and his family. The privacy of the two characters and its absurd disturbances reveal their character traits, as well as chatacter development throughout the two novels.
An important factor to be taken under consideration would be the absurd and profound effect nature has on Meursault’s mood. Meursault wakes up troubled and arguably in a bad mood, “a face like a funeral” (P.49), on the day he commits the murder. Meursault’s privacy becomes disturbed by the sun on several occasions during that day, yet he seams to react differently in each situation. The sun for example, had a positive effect on Meursault when he was swimming with Marie, “sun doing me good… I was glad to be swimming” (P.52). Later on, however, nature or the sun has a negative effect on Meursault, the same negative effect it had on him during his mother’s funeral. This feeling is brought on by an increase in the intensity of language used by Camus to describe the harshness of the sun, just before he commits the murder. “The light leapt up off the steel…like a long flashing sword lunging at my forehead” (P.60). Camus’s...