The Stranger

The first group, Group 1, had to present their lecture and skit this Monday. It felt like it was the first day of actual class. I felt sorry for group 1, not only were they chosen to be the first presenters, but they also only had 3 people in their group when most groups have 5 people. None of that stopped them; they did a wonderful job. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of quality discussion over Part 1 of the Stranger. The Stranger is a story of Meursault’s life after having his grandmother recently pass away. Group 1 started out leading the discussion for the day by using a powerpoint to examine the main points.

It looked like they had prepared a 10 plus slide powerpoint presentation, but they only got through 2 of the them. It was amazing; the first slide was on the personalities and characters in part 1, and as soon as a character was introduced students where egger to get their opinions out. The class discussion went over so well that the teacher actually had to remind them to stop the discussion in order for them do their skit. That was mostly what happened but lets talk about the main ideas that I thought were interesting that students brought up.

The first thing that I remember the most was that a person pointed out how the heat/weather should have been on the first slide as a character. It was an interesting idea, the heat definitely played had a huge part in the Stranger. Every time Meursault’s character was being challenged, he would complain about how harsh the heat was. Whether the heat was an actually real or just something that Meursault imagined, the heat was a very focused topic.

Our teacher, Thad, brought up an interesting idea that took up a considerable amount of time. Thad asked the question,” Who would like to have Meursault as a friend”. An interesting question that I wasn’t prepared to answer. It’s very hard to answer a question like that, Meursault had a hard time presenting his emotions. When he talked it didn’t sound like he loved is girlfriend Marie, and his neighbor didn’t sound like a true friend. The reason why the question was so difficult was because Meursalt killed a person. But as I thought about the question, I realized that being a murderer wasn’t that important to me to earn friendship. I think how a person treats me is more important than what they do to others.