Worth Opposing

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.