When
Meursault is jailed in the second half of s novel , he struggles with
boredom. Meursault finds a yellowed newspaper article under his mattress and reads it
thousands of times to kill time.
The article records the story of a Czech
man who left his village at a young age, became rich and then attempted to surprise his mother
and sister by returning incognito. Not recognizing their son and brother, the two women bludgeon
him to death with a hammer when they discover he is wealthy. When they learn the truth of their
robbery victims' identity, they commit suicide. As this is Meursaults only reading material, he
memorizes every detail and evaluates each nuance of the story for hours. His assessment of the
story is brief:
In one way it sounded most unlikely; in
another, it was plausible enough. Anyhow, to my mind, the man was asking for trouble; one
shouldnt play fool tricks of that sort.
Meursault is not
concerned by the human aspect of the newspaper
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