A slight shift.

At the beginning of chapter 6, part 1 of The Stranger, I noticed a little bit of a change in narration. Before, there was little to no mention of feelings, emotions, or anything along those lines; I'm not saying that Meursault starts to open up to us in this chapter, but right from the first page, there was a little bit more of a "normal" feel to the narration.

Meursault begins the chapter by saying that he had trouble waking up that morning because he "felt completely drained and...had a slight headache." This isn't a great leap indicating that Meursault is coming out of his shell by any means, but it kind of surprised me how he mentioned something so similar to a feeling or an emotion. "Drained" is a very evocative word, and what he's describing seems very un-Meursault-like.

It's not only this first paragraph that discusses more emotions and feelings, but there are little bursts here and there in the next few paragraphs as well. Meursault keeps saying how tired he is (which I suppose is a physical state also, but in the context I read it as describing an emotion/feeling), and he describes Marie as joyful and says she "laughed with delight." Sometime later, Meursault even says that he "felt a little better."

The final piece of this emotion-puzzle that I've put together from this one page in the book is when Meursault offers an explanation in the form of a normal human. Usually, people say, "Something happened, which was __________." The "which was" part is important. Meursault never gives us the "which was". But he does here! At one point, he describes Raymond's arms as "all white under the black hairs." The next sentence is, "I found it a little repulsive." Yayyyyy! We got a "which was" from Meursault!

Maybe this is a super minor point, but it made me really happy to read all the snippets and mentions of emotions and feelings, and to finally get a "which was" out of Meursault.