Violence as a motive in The Stranger and the Sailor Who Fell in Disgrace with the SeaIn Albert Camus's The Stranger and The Sailor who fell from grace with the sea by Yukio Mishima, violence is an important motif. This article will attempt to show how comparisons exist in these books that reinforce the motif of violence. The violence ends in murder or multiple murders in the above books. In The Stranger, Meursault, an absurd hero, shoots the Arab five times on the beach. He explains the scenario by telling the reader: “I was all tense and I tightened my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the stock; and it was there, in this noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, that it all began. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had broken the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I had been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace” (Camus 59). In The Sailor Who Fell Out of Grace with the Sea, the victim of the first violent murder that occurs is a kitten. Noboru, a thirteen-year-old boy, is given the task by the leader of the gang (which is made up of teenagers) to kill the kitten by throwing it against a log. Mishima introduces Noboru's nervousness before the murder by describing to the reader his physical state and states: Just a minute before, he had taken a cold bath, but he was sweating profusely again. He felt it blow through his chest like the morning sea breeze: intent to kill. His chest looked like a clothes rack made of hollow metal poles and hung with shirts drying in the sun” (Mishima 57). The author paints a picture of the murder scene in the middle of a sheet of paper..... .Ryuji returns from a trip to settle in with Fukaso and begin his life as a father. The dinner Ryuji had at Fukaso's house and the night he spends there in the first part of the book foreshadow their relationship in the second part. The killing of the kitten in part one foreshadows Ryuji's killing in part two. A comparison is made between The Stranger and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea to show how the authors of the books used the literary theme of violence and used literary tools such as setting, genre, characterization and structure of the book to conclude their violent motives for murder. Works cited: Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. New York: Vintage, 1988. Mishima, Yukio. The sailor who fell out of favor with the sea. Trans. John Nathan. New York: Vintage, 1994.