l'Etranger

has anyone got any tips on literature essays, i've got my L'Etranger exam next week and pile of other massively hard exams with so i haven't alot of time to revise..help would be greatly appreciated...o yeah forgot to mention that my teacher's incompetent so im screwed on that front. :p:

Reply 1

lingolicious

I've read L'Etranger but not for A-level so I haven't studied it properly but I guess the process is pretty much the same for any book. Try to make notes on each of the characters and also the main themes. If you have past essay titles, plan them and work out what quotes you'd want to use for them. For the books I'm studying I've been reading them again and extracting the important quotes, commenting on them and putting them in categories of characters which I find quite helpful.
Sorry if that's not specific enough. If you want some analysis of l'Etranger I'm sure you could find some on the internet, just put it in Google. Good luck!

Reply 2

welwyn

I've studied L'Etranger.
Some popular/relevant themes

1. The whole sun/heat thing features a lot. "Meursault" is Camus' word-play on "Mer-sel". The last bit of Ch 6 is very important for quotations
2. Is Meursault incapable of lying? He's very honest, which exposes big problems between him and other people, eg the indifference to Marie's love (eg, a bit into ch 5 when she asks him to marry her)
3. And indifference - he isn't interested in ambition at all (eg, when his boss offers him the new job promotion, Meursault pretty much couldn't care less)
4. The thing with the title "the outsider" - he doesn't link in to society, which is ultimately why he is killed
- Is Meursault a character in his own right or a vehicle for Camus' Leftish-tendency philosophy?

other tips
- Link into big themes of Camus and what he's trying to achieve: existentialism, empathy from the audience
- How does he achieve this - a sort of interior monologue?
- quotations, backed up with a relevant point
- highlight Camus' use of individual words, eg metaphors for the sun, the knife, sweat + tears, and the revolver. Also pick up on th uses of tenses - the byplay between perfect and imperfect
- have a good conclusion (and learn good French essay phrases)

good luck!
welwyn

Reply 3

chicky_dee

thanks for the tips didn't know about that meursault namey wordplay thingy, might be a nice filler if a character question came up on him. i dont know why i'm fretting about this i mean the spanish lit paper was a doddle..

Reply 4

Emma G 15

I'm struggling with it too! The teacher who taught us it left at Christmas and my other teachers haven't read it for 30 odd years (although they both knew she was leaving so I don't know why they didn't do something about it). Anyway, I've found that the questions may sound tricky but actually always link to one of the main areas- characters, themes etc. For example the society one that came up last year was just a cleverly disguised themes question which is actually quite simple when you look at it like that.

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