Camus leaves the reader guessing why Mersault does ands feels such things. At the beginning I really didn't get why Mersault doesn't describes his "mourning" the way he does, or why he doesn't seem to find a meaning to his life. But all my quarries with the novel tempered with the slaughter that Mesault commits the day at the beach. "I knew I’d shattered the balance of the day, the spacious calm of this beach on which I had been happy. But I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace."(39) Such a random event, leads to endless questions. I was just getting accustomed to Mersault´s existentialist lifestyle, but just as a life of boredom and bottom-line shameful seems to be "normal," Mersault looses his bearings.
But such a thought, a thought that Mersault is completely insane, seems to distance itself from the core of what is really going on. Even though Camus doesn't explain why Mersault does such a thing, it becomes unnecessary, once I realized Mersault´s goal in life: none. Once I realized that Mersault has no goal in life: he lives for nothing thus justifying such actions. He doesn't mourn his mother, doesn't love Marie, and frankly doesn't care about dwelling on the murder he has just committed. Camus leaves the reader to finally solve the existentialist formula. The fact that life is meaningless, doesn't lead to: why? The formula leads to "why not?"
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