Monsieur Mersault simply lifted a gun, pulled the trigger and killed an Arabian bloke.
Monsieur Mersault was sent to jail for committing muder, and still worse, for not crying at his mother's funeral. In a sense, he was locked up because of a spontaneous act, which resulted from his exhaustion from a sequence of events and thoughts.
Perhaps I too am imprisoned though it is not exactly based on any one crime that I have committed, but rather on a sequence of mistakes that I have made.
The current state that I am in is a consequence of my ignorance and arrogance originating from as far as I can recall... probably high school time, probably secondary school, probably primary. I have wasted all the opportunities that came to me so very readily. I have never cared enough to look everything through to its core, its nature, its foundations, its utmost basics. All that I have ever cared about are the coats - the clinking sounds of medals, the certificates, the grades, the compliments, the flowery words... the try-to-be, and not the honestly-be.
School out, no job, no status, no salary... All these things together arouse within me a constant perception of the future as a gloomy stormy rainy day, the very chill of which is blown - back in time - throughout many days that I have not yet lived, as Mersault put it, through to the very hours that I am living. Then we seem to both agree on one point: when a man has no power whatsoever over his life, he is deprived of his liberty, he is a prisoner.
Mersault was kept inside some real concrete walls made of hard rock, but his weary mind finally sought out for itself some sort of escape, some sort of enlightenement, and so he managed to become detached from the world so as not to be touched by it anymore. His theory was that death was not a terrible loss, but rather a chance to end an old life to begin a new one.
But the jail that I am in is not of those same objective walls. It is a jail created by my own hands and imagination. So even if I could split my own personality into two halves - one were the jury who would (or would not) condemn me, and the other were the criminal who would be condemned, I would still be stuck in this world. I would still be unable to depart, to let go of this life with such a tranquil countenance.
Mersault hit the prison house in a state of full awareness and tiresome almost as though hitting the end of the road to get ready to move onto another road. As for me, I have just hit the jail in a state of delirium with my eyes closed and my mind closed. Am I being punished until my eyes would open and my mind would see? Like they usually say "I'm gonna knock some sense out of ya."