Meursault's killing of the Arab is the turning point of the narrative: an encounter initially generated by Raymond's feud becomes Meursault's irreversible act. On the beach, under oppressive heat and blinding light, Meursault takes Raymond's revolver, fires once at the Arab, and then fires four more shots into the motionless body. The event destroys the calm of the day, initiates Meursault's arrest and prosecution, and later becomes the central fact through which the court judges not only his violence but his character.

Causes and Background

The confrontation grows out of Raymond's earlier assault on his mistress and the revenge that followed. After Meursault gave evidence for Raymond at the police station, the authorities released Raymond with a warning, and the two men remained connected by the consequences of Raymond's conduct. Before going to the beach, Meursault, Marie Cardona, and Raymond saw several Arabs across the street. Raymond identified the second Arab as the man who held a grudge against him, although he assured Meursault that the matter belonged to the past. The Arabs did not openly pursue them, but their presence makes the earlier violence active again.

At Masson's bungalow, the tension becomes physical. Meursault and Raymond see two Arabs approaching along the beach, and Raymond explains how the men should respond if a fight begins: Masson is to take one opponent, Raymond the other, while Meursault is to stand by and help if necessary. When the groups meet, Raymond strikes his chosen opponent, Masson attacks the second man, and the fight ends with one Arab in the water and Raymond's opponent bleeding. Raymond announces that he is not finished, but the Arab produces a knife. Meursault warns Raymond, and Raymond is wounded in the arm and mouth before the Arabs withdraw. The immediate assault appears to be over, yet the revolver remains with Meursault, preserving the possibility of a second encounter.

The Beach Encounter

Later, Meursault walks alone toward the boulders at the end of the beach, seeking the shade and the cool stream behind the rock. He is not consciously returning to complete the conflict. Instead, he is driven by the heat, the glare, and the physical pressure that has accompanied him since the morning. There he discovers that Raymond's Arab has returned and is lying alone beneath the rock, with his face shaded but the rest of his body exposed to the sun. The sight surprises Meursault because he had believed the incident finished.

The Arab's hand moves toward his pocket, and Meursault grips Raymond's revolver through his coat. For a time, distance separates them. Meursault considers turning away and walking back, while the Arab remains still, partly obscured by heat haze. The beach seems to press against Meursault's back, and the prospect of escape from the scene competes with the growing force of the sun. When Meursault takes another step, the Arab draws his knife and raises it across the sunlight.

The reflected light from the blade overwhelms Meursault's perception. Sweat runs into his eyes, and he experiences the knife's flash as a piercing force directed at his forehead and eyes. The heat recalls the sensations of Madame Meursault's funeral, linking the killing to an earlier encounter with death through the recurring imagery of sun, bodily discomfort, and oppressive brightness. The scene does not present a clean separation between external threat and internal sensation: the Arab's knife is real, but the heat and glare determine how Meursault receives it.

The Shooting and Its Immediate Meaning

Meursault's grip closes on the revolver, the trigger gives, and the first shot kills the Arab. He then fires four additional shots into the inert body, although they leave no visible mark. The repeated firing changes the event from a single explosive reaction into a sequence with its own grim finality. Meursault recognizes that he has shattered the balance and calm of the beach, and each later shot becomes part of the irreversible process that leads to his undoing.

The value of the scene shifts from ordinary leisure to death and confinement. The beach had held sunlight, water, walking, and the promise of relief; after the shooting, the same setting becomes the origin point of arrest, interrogation, and judgment. The killing is therefore both a physical act and a narrative rupture. It breaks the apparent continuity of the day and converts Raymond's personal grievance into a case centered on Meursault.

Legal Consequences and Competing Accounts

Immediately after his arrest, Meursault undergoes formal questioning about his identity and circumstances. At the police station, the authorities initially show little interest in the case, but the examining magistrate later questions him with curiosity and arranges for a lawyer when Meursault has not chosen one. The killing thus moves from an apparently simple act into an institutional process whose procedures claim to make the event intelligible.

At the trial, Raymond testifies that the dead man was Raymond's enemy because Raymond had beaten up the man's sister. He insists that Meursault's presence on the beach was a coincidence and says that the letter leading to the tragedy was also the result of chance. This testimony places the killing within Raymond's chain of actions while simultaneously exposing Meursault's connection to it. The court can therefore treat the death as both an accidental continuation of another man's feud and as evidence against Meursault himself.

The Arab remains largely unnamed and speaks only through the actions attributed to him: approaching, fighting, drawing the knife, and returning to the rock. By contrast, Meursault is repeatedly identified, questioned, represented by counsel, and judged by the court. The legal narrative gives institutional visibility to the accused while leaving the dead man as an anonymous figure. That asymmetry is part of the event's significance: the killing is not only an individual act of violence but also a scene in which colonial and legal power determine whose identity becomes fully legible.

Memory, Imprisonment, and Death

The killing returns with altered force after Meursault is imprisoned. In prison, the memory of a remark made by the nurse at Madame Meursault's funeral comes back to him, joining the beach murder, the funeral, and the prison's evenings in a chain of recurring sensations and thoughts. The event is not confined to the moment when the revolver fires; it continues through recollection, legal interpretation, and the anticipation of execution.

Meursault's later reflections on the justice system show how the shooting has become inseparable from his own death sentence. He imagines the condemned prisoner escaping at the last instant from what he calls “the implacable machinery of justice,” yet he also recognizes that the verdict's consequences become as tangible as the prison wall. The court's decision is shaped by time, procedure, and the judgment of men, but once delivered it governs his existence with material force.

As execution approaches, Meursault repeatedly considers the appeal that might save him and the death that will eventually come regardless of its timing. The killing has made death immediate, but imprisonment teaches him that death was always universal and unavoidable. After his violent confrontation with the prison chaplain, he reaches a new understanding of Madame Meursault's final attempt to begin again in the Home for Aged Persons. He feels ready to start life again and accepts what he calls “the benign indifference of the universe.” The beach murder thus ends not in moral repair or religious consolation, but in Meursault's recognition that the act has placed him within the same mortal condition as everyone else, while leaving him awaiting execution and even hoping that spectators will greet it with cries of hatred.