When the sun or light is present, Mersault is often unhappy or in an unhappy situation. This idea is repeated from Maman's death, to the beach, and most recently to the room where Mersault was questioned in chapter 6. He also gets tired in the presence of sunlight, and calls daytime "a slap in the face". The sun also makes Mersault "drunk" on two occasions (the funeral and at the beach) so he is unable to think straight.
Come to think of it, the sun makes Mersault a lot of things. It's a blanket reason that he uses to justify his mental state. That would make sense because the sun is pretty much always there except for night time (during which Mersault sleeps, CONTRAST!). The sun makes him drowsy, makes him drunk, and makes him kill the Arab. The sun makes us do things, like going outside on a beautiful day like today, and it might give us emotions like happiness, but I don't think our lives are being as dictated by the sun as Mersault is. Perhaps the sun is representing some greater being, like God, that Camus believes has power over people because he makes is affect Mersault so heavily.
The sun could also embody the psychological idea of determinism, under which every action and every choice a person makes can be boiled down to some reason or past event that made he or she perform an action. Since it makes Mersault feel things like tired or angry and do things like kill people, the determinism argument would make sense here! The sun is described as oppressive, and may demonstrate Mersault's desire to have free will (which does not exist under determinism). Maybe Camus is saying determinism isn't really the way to go, but that we can't really go any other way because the sun is always there. Except for at night time. Maybe we have free will in our dreams.
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