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Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Nothing But Stones:
When Meursault first sees the group of Arab men allegedly following Raymond, he uses a simile to describe how they stare:
We were just about to leave when all of a sudden Raymond motioned to me to look across the street. I saw a group of Arabs leaning against the front of the tobacconist’s shop. They were staring at us in silence, but in that way of theirs, as if we were nothing but stones or dead trees.
This simile is used to describe how Arab men look at French men like Meursault—as if, according to Meursault, French men are just “stones” or "dead trees." The phrase "[i]n that way of theirs" dismisses the Arab men and their actions as those of a different group (an other), thus centering the French-Arab colonial conflict in a story that is fundamentally about the murder of an Arab man by a French man. Ironically, it is Meursault who treats people like objects, whether he is claiming that nothing changed after his mother’s death or that he is killing another person almost involuntarily. While Meursault does not recognize the humanity of the Arab people, he uses figurative language to paint them as failing to recognize the humanity of the French.
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