Justice is a struggle in terms of equality; either a person is given justice in the hopes of finding a truer life or one’s justice is taken away in the hopes of eradicating their impact or influence. Often, cultures abide by creeds that uphold justice in numerous forms, but the method through which justice is obtained and preserved is the distinguishable factor. Albert Camus, an existentialistic author born in Algeria, chose to uphold that the values of “liberty, justice, brotherhood, and happiness… along with the terms revolt and absurd, described human non-acceptance of a world without meaning or value” (Camus 1868). Through the accounts of Daru, Camus’s protagonist in The Guest, the ability to create a heavily moral environment while stretching the limits of moral integration portray Camus’s existentialistic views. Daru’s indecision, concerning the Arab prisoner’s injustice and/or freedom, extends from his own moral coding which diminishes the existentialistic approach of logic.
Daru’s moral coding, when pertaining to his morality or the way he is characterized, exemplifies sacrifice. Daru lives in a self sufficient manner even though he is a member of a poverty stricken community. The pupils that attend his class can no longer attend due to the frigid weather, but Camus instead depicts Daru to call the classroom “frigid” because without children it is cold and dire, “after eight months of drought without the transition of rain, and the twenty pupils, more or less, who lived in the villages scattered over the plateau had stopped coming” (Camus 1872). Logically, his existence represents foolishness, but morally his struggles represent that of a man with a clear conscious. Existentially Camus inserts sacrifice as Daru’s as an at...
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...he prisoner signified Daru’s characterization as man who did not want to be involved in the world’s trouble but rather a man who wanted a remote and free willed lifestyle.
Works Cited
Camus, Albert. “The Guest.” The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, vol 2. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. 1999. 1868-1880. Print.
Ellison, David R. "Summer and Exile and the Kingdom." Understanding Albert Camus. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. 194-199. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 76. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.
Griem, Eberhard. "Albert Camus's 'The Guest': A New Look at the Prisoner." Studies in Short Fiction 30.1 (Winter 1993): 95-98. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 76. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
May, C. E. (2012). Critical Survey of Short Fiction: World Writers (4th ed.). Ipswich: Salem Press.
Camus philosophy of Existentialism is proven when Daru adds a new dimension to the moral decision believing that by letting the Arab make his own difficulty and agony choice with taking responsibility for our own lives .He has conformed to facing up to the truth about what we
The Existentialists say man is free to choose yet the choice and having to choose is inevitable and this is seen in The Guest where the Arab is forced into Daru’s life so thrusting upon him the crossroad of what to do with the Arab, either turn him in or let him go. In Existentialist belief due to the exact same choice man is always anxious and hesitant, not knowing whether his choice is proper or not, is it accepted by others or not, and this is seen so clearly again by the simple repetition of the word “hesitation” and its other forms in the story:
Thody, Philip. Albert Camus 1913 – 1960. 2nd ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962.
American Literature. 6th Edition. Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 783-791
Daru, the schoolteacher in a remote area of Algeria, is torn between duty and what he believes is the right thing to do when he is suddenly forced in the middle of a situation he does not expect. He must escort an Arabic prisoner to the nearest town. It is not that Daru has much sympathy for the man; in fact, he does not, and actually finds himself disliking the Arab for disrupting so many lives. "Daru felt a sudden wrath against the man, against all men with their rotten spite, their tireless hates, their blood lust." Unfortunately, Daru loves his homeland, and cannot bear to think of leaving, despite the chaos that is raging around him between France and the Algerian natives. I believe that Daru makes the right choice in letting the prisoner choose his own fate. Daru has reaso...
Of the many themes and philosophies that Camus struggled with during his life and presented to the world through his writings, one of the more prevalent was that of the absurd. According to Camus, the world, human existence, and a God are all absurd phenomenons, devoid of any redeeming meaning or purpose. Through Mersaults’ epiphany in The Stranger, where he opens himself to the “gentle indifference of the world”, we see how Camus understands the world to be a place of nothingness, which demands and desires nothing from humans. He further explores this philosophy in The Plague, where the world of indifference is understood as a world of fear, which takes a symbolically tangible form in the plague itself. In The Plague the citizens of Oran fear that which they cannot control, understand or fight. They are faced with the most fundamental experiences of life and death, and it is only in the end that a very few find a way to cope with and understand these two ultimatums.
Pike, Gerald. “Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers.” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas Votteler. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Research International Limited, 1990. 90. Print.
Camus’s absurd philosophy asserts that the events of the world have no rational order or visible meaning. The story of the returning son murdered by his mother and sister is a perfect example of what he is trying to show us in The Stranger. There is no reason for the son to have died. His terrible, ironic fate is not compatible with any logical or ordered system governing human existence. Like Meursault’s killing of the Arab, the son’s death is a purposeless, meaningless tragedy that defies rationalization or justification. Now because of the murder Meursault is put on trial the following summer and while he is on trial, Meursault comes to understand that his failure to interpret or find meaning in his own life has left him vulnerable to others, who will impose such meaning for him. Until this point, Meursault has unthinkingly drifted from moment to moment, lacking the motivation or ability to examine his life as a narrative with a past, present, and
Abrams, M.H., et al. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 Vols. New York: Norton, 1993.
Often times an author incorporates a thought or philosophy into a work that can shape or reshape the attitude emitted from the novel. In Albert Camus', The Stranger, the Existential philosophy that the author fills into the work give an aura of apathy. With the opening lines of "Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure," Camus immediately sets a tone of indifference (1). Though the protagonist, Mersault, is not completely without cares, the overall attitude of passiveness he has toward himself, as well as toward others, give the entire novel a tone of apathy.
“Short Stories." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010. 125-388. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. VALE - Mercer County Community College. 28 February 2014
Albert Camus’ The Stranger offers one man’s incite into the justice of society. Monsieur Meursault, the main protagonist in the novel, believes that morals and the concept of right and wrong possess no importance. This idea influences him to act distinctively in situations that require emotion and just decision, including feeling sadness over his mother’s death, the abuse of a woman, and his killing of an innocent man. In these situations Meursault apathetically devoids himself of all emotion and abstains from dealing with the reality in front of him. When confronted by the court over his murder, he reiterates his habitual motto on life that nothing matters anyways, so why care? His uncaring response inflames the people working within the
In The Stranger, Albert Camus describes the life of the protagonist, Meursault, through life changing events. The passage chosen illustrates Meursault’s view during his time in prison for killing the Arab. In prison, one can see the shifts in Meursault’s character and the acceptance of this new lifestyle. Camus manipulates diction to indicate the changes in Meursault caused by time thinking of memories in prison and realization of his pointless life. Because Camus published this book at the beginning of World War II, people at this time period also questions life and death similar to how Meursault does.