Explain why the following selection from The Stranger is important: "I had been looking at the stones in these walls for months. There...

There is
much in way of meaning within the excerpt from Camus's . Its meaning can be
set against some of the thoughts that the Priest offers earlier to him:

Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never
looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched
among have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to
see.

In Mersault's response, his rejection of
conventional totality is evident.  The claims of the divine are posited to Mersault, something
that he simply repudiates with his notion that there was nothing within the stones that
he...