Camus Essay Continued

According to Meriam-Webster, disconnect is defined as "to become detached or withdrawn." Disconnect clearly defines Mersault's relationship with his mother. Mersault's seemingly indifferent attitude towards everything in his life affected his relationship with his mother. He ended up putting her in a home and rarely visiting her. When he found out the news of her death, he was evidently unaffected by what had happened. The result of his disconnected relationship could have been caused by his later teenage years. Most teenagers today try very hard to disconnect themselves from their parents in order to mature and become more independent. If teenagers become too independent and disconnected they can end up having relationships with their parents similar to Mersault's; however, if they do not gain enough independence, they will not be emotionally ready to go off to college and mature as an adult.

Mersault’s relationship with his mother is easily described as detached and dysfunctional. On the surface, Mersault is very distant from his mother and they don’t seem to have a typical mother-son relationship. Mersault decides to put his mother into a nursing home for the remainder of her life, and barely visits her. When he hears the news of her passing, it almost seems as though going to her funeral is a nuisance. He states at the very beginning of the novel: “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know” (Camus 3).  This disconnected relationship between mother and son must have been caused by something in Mersault’s childhood. Analyzing their relationship, the deep-rooted disconnect must come from Mersault’s teenage years as he was becoming an adult. It seems that as teenagers grow up, they attempt to become more independent and break away from their parents. It seems as though Mersault became too independent, and broke away too much from his mother, ruining their relationship.

Today’s generation of teenagers, I believe more than ever, are trying to break the standard of the traditional mother-child relationship. Even comparing my generation to my parents’ generation, relationships between mother and child have progressed and modernized. It seems that as society progresses, teenagers are attempting to become more independent. According to Nietzsche, a person is in a constant struggle to be an individual. He states: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”