Stranger Journal 2

         One minor character I chose to look at was Celeste. The meaning of the name Celeste is "heavenly." I'm not quite sure yet how that ties into the character, but Camus definitely plays a lot with religion in the novel so it is interesting and not surprising that he chose a religous name. The description Mersault gives of Celeste is that he is "there, as always, with his big belly, his apron, and his white moustache." He sounds like almost a grandfatherly figure since they always meet up at his place.
      Another minor character in chapter 3 is Salamano, along with his dog. Mersault tells of how the two spend every minute together and they sort of look like each other, but they hate each other. Also, Salamano says something interesting when Mersault asks him what the dog is always doing that irritates him so much and Salamano replies "He's just always there." Salamano is always beating his dog and then his dog forgets and does it again and then he beats him again and so on a so forth. First off, I think this could relate to the overall theme of pointlessness in life in general. I mean, they keep doing the same thing over and over day in and day out and yet nothing is accomplished and it's really meaningless. This has obvious connections to the philosophy of Absurdism that Albert Camus was fond of. It's quite absurd that people should go all their lives in circles going about doing things that don't matter. It doesn't change anything and whatever you accomplish, is eventually forgotten and you start back over again.
         One other thing I thought this could connect to was because Salamano and his dog are really all each other has yet they can't seem to get a long and they are always contradicting each other, I thought it was similar to the inner workings of Mersault himself since he is constantly contradicting with himself and although he knows what he should be doing, he often finds himself forgetting or chosing to do something else instead. And many of his personality traits as well as his actions blatantly oppose and contradict each other.
         As far as the cultural setting in chapter 3, I noticed a lot of mention of street cars. Which is interesting because it makes everything seem a little more fast paced than in the first two chapters where there was more talk about countryside, etc.
        Also, when Raymond talks to Mersault about the women that he had been previously seeing, he talks about beating her and punishing her and all this. Which definitely relates to those times when women weren't necesarily viewed as equal to men and it was okay to beat a woman. And it seems like women are seen more as objects.