In Le Clézio's eyes: An interpretation of the phenomenology of life in The Stranger on the Earth

Le Clézio's collection of essays The Stranger on the Earth describes with poetic language a mysterious little boy wandering in the city and at the sea, looking for the ultimate light in the day. An intense gaze runs throughout his writing; It comes gaze not only from the observer, but also from the world around, and that ubiquitous light. It is a heterogeneous and at the same time unified meaning structure, whose representation of power is in essence different from that of the gaze in Western tradition, for it attempts to transcend the binary oppositions between subject and object, soul and body, and man and nature resulting from the opposition between reason and science. This article will use the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty's theory about phenomenology of life to analyze the text. By comparing the writer's vision with the Western traditional gazing mechanism, the article will show the structural characteristics of the writer's gaze and his way of writing: Writing with no purpose, letting life itself show, so that mancan go back to the origin of life and meaning of existence.