Meursault, a young clerk living in Algiers, receives a telegram informing him of his mother’s death at an old-age home in Marengo, located eighty kilometers away. He requests two days of leave from his reluctant employer, rationalizing that the situation is not his fault, and travels by bus to the home during a oppressive heatwave. Upon arriving, Meursault meets with the director, who reassures him that placing his mother in the home was a practical necessity given Meursault's modest salary.
When taken to the mortuary to view his mother, Meursault declines the caretaker's offer to unscrew the coffin lid. He spends the night holding a wake beside the sealed casket. During the vigil, the caretaker offers him café au lait, and Meursault smokes a cigarette, indifferent to the surrounding circumstances. Later that evening, several of his mother's friends from the home join him in silence. Their outward expressions of grief, including one woman who cries continuously, alienate and annoy Meursault. He notes his own intense physical fatigue and observes the elders with a detached curiosity, noting how their bizarre mannerisms make him feel as though he is being judged.
The following morning, the funeral procession sets out for the village church. The director allows one resident, a frail old man named Thomas Pérez who was deeply attached to Meursault’s mother, to join the procession. The walk to the church is marked by blistering heat, blinding sunlight, and melting tar on the road. Meursault remains emotionally detached, conversing briefly with a funeral undertaker about the weather and his mother's age, both of which he is indifferent to or unsure about. He watches Pérez struggle to keep pace with the hearse, limping and taking shortcuts through the fields before weeping and eventually fainting from exhaustion.
Meursault retains only a chaotic blur of images from the burial itself: the local villagers, the red geraniums on the graves, the blood-colored earth hitting the coffin, and the white roots mixed into the soil. Following the ceremony, he returns to the village, waits for his bus, and arrives back in Algiers. He experiences a profound sense of relief and joy at the prospect of finally going to bed to sleep for twelve hours, entirely unaffected by the gravity of his mother's passing.