The Meursault Investigation: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Harun asks the interlocutor to forgive him for his age and tendency to ramble. He feels that after living so long, he must have some “essential revelation” before he dies. He’s often struck by “the disproportion between my insignificance and the vastness of the cosmos.”

However, despite all the years Harun has lived, he finds he spends most of his time replaying Musa’s story. He can’t even talk about it with Mama anymore, as she has become mute. Nothing else in the country interests him, so he lives “like a streetwalker,” moving apathetically between his office and apartment. He’s never had a meaningful relationship with a woman after Meriem.

In fact, Harun has been like a “ghost” among the busy people in his neighborhood. He often feels like he has access to a secret that they don’t. Sometimes he wants to shout to everyone that he and Musa are the real heroes of “that famous story,” but he knows no one will believe him.

Harun spends a lot of time on the balcony of his apartment, where he can look out at a large mosque; he says he loathes its “big finger pointed at the sky.” Sometimes he wants to climb up the minaret and bellow all the profanities he knows through the loudspeakers. He wants to cry out “that I’m free, and that God is a question, not an answer.”

Just as a priest visited Meursault in his cell, lots of imams try to convince Harun to believe in God and become more religious. He imagines a scene in which he shouts blasphemies at them as they become increasingly more distraught. If they tell him that there’s a life after death, he will say that he just wants “a life where he can remember this one.” After this they will kill him, and he will die like a “martyr.”

One day, an imam visits Harun and tries to make him pray; when the man says gently that he will pray on his behalf, Harun becomes enraged and yells at the imam that “none of his certainties was worth one hair on the head of the woman I loved,” and that the imam is “living like a dead man.”

Harun tells the imam that he is confident in his own life and the death that awaits him. He says that nothing in life matters, because “throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in the future.” Everyone is equally privileged, because everyone will eventually be condemned by death, even the imam. By now, other neighbors have arrived to rescue the imam from Harun’s grasp. The imam turns around and disappears.

The interlocutor asks if Harun believes in God, and he laughs. He says that people shouldn’t ask other men about God, they should ask “Him” directly. Sometimes he has a feeling that he really is inside a minaret, and a mob is outside trying desperately to tear down the door. He knows that he will soon die, but she shouts out that “The mosque is empty, the minaret is empty.” He’s happy in the knowledge that a large crowd will watch his execution and hate him.

Mama is still alive, but her life seems pointless as she doesn’t say or do anything. On the contrary, Harun knows he talks too much—just like Meursault, another murderer who has gone unpunished. He remarks that Meursault’s name translates to “the messenger” in Arabic.

The bar is going to close soon, and Harun tells the interlocutor that they need to finish their drinks. It seems like a joke that the only person witnessing their discussion is the deaf “bottle ghost.”

Harun wonders aloud if his story is “suitable,” but it’s all he can give to the interlocutor. He could be a compulsive liar who’s just giving him false information to fill up his notebooks. Writing the biography of “the Arab” is like writing about God, because no one has really met either one. Harun wishes again that there could be a “legion” of spectators at his execution, “savage in their hate.”