What Effect Do Literary Devices That Portray Society Have On The Characters Meursault And Nora?

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How would you feel? In the novel The Outsider by Albert Camus, and in the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, literary devices were used to prove the effects of society on an individual. In the Outsider, Camus was able to use light and heat imagery to describe the effects of society on Meursault. Society places pressure on Meursault during his mother’s funeral and during his trial, because he is unwilling to play the ‘game’ of society. In A Doll’s House, money and debt are used to describe the viewpoint of society on Nora when she commits fraud to gain a loan. In both narratives, society affects the way in which both characters deal with their struggles. By using literary devices, the main characters of both narratives felt pressured into doing something to satisfy or defy society. Nora feels that she is pressured from society into saving her husband, Torvald, because “[Torvald] simply [has] to go to the south,” (156,Ibsen) Yet, in The Outsider, Meursault could only feel “the cymbals the sun was clashing against his forehead.” (60, Camus) As the intensity of the sun increase, Meursault felt that “the dazzling spear still leaping up off the knife in front of me.”(60) It was the reflection of the sun which let “the trigger [give].”(60) In the situation, the sunlight pressured Meursault into shooting the Arab. The sun acted like a spotlight of society on Meursault. In the end, Meursault did not want to play the game of society, and he shoots the Arab four more times to defy society. If Meursault had only shot the Arad only once, society would not give him such a hard time, because ‘the trigger gave.”(60) He could have used his mother’s death and self defence as excuses, but Meursault paused and consciously took four more shots. The four shots prove to society that Meursault was not going to play “the game,” and defying them. Society even gave Meursault time to

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