The Guest is a text that communicates the feeling of alienation and desire of confinement that humans experience, it also explains the idea of absurdity and the sense of moral distress.
The environment in which the story takes place, creates a sentiment of isolation and solitude. The school where Daru teaches is located on top of a plateau in the cold mountains. The isolation of the school shows how every person is truly disconnected from everybody else.
Daru the protagonist of the story is an enigma. He is a hero, to others he is an agent of French oppression, but still he is something in between. The resemblance is noticeable when we take the author of book Albert Camus himself as an example, unable to reconcile between being French as he is born and raised in Algeria, he find it hard to make a choice, so he chose none.
All these different perspectives demonstrates how strange Daru is. He is in a constant battle through the story. Daru shows resistance while cooperating with Balducci when he asks him to deliver the prisoner.
Daru supports the man’s freedom, he then asks what the prisoner crime was and Balducci says he killed his cousin in a family quarrel. This can demonstrate that the murder he did was justified but yet he was captured not according to the Arab justice that he lives by, but by French colonial law.
“Daru felt a sudden wrath against the man, against all men with their rotten spite, their tireless hates, their blood lust.”
A brief reading of this part and one would think that Daru was disgusted by the Arab’s act, however a closer reading shows that he was talking about Balducci.
It appears that Daru comprehended the logic in the prisoner’s act of murder and understood that he is not by any means guilty, but simply misunderstood.
Since he couldn’t communicate in the French language he was not able to defend himself.
Daru is the only one that still sees that Arab as human. By trying to avoid the responsibility of having him executed. Daru gives the Arab the chance to make his own decision by untying his hands and giving him plenty of opportunities to escape.
But despite that, the Arab declines the offer. The choice that Daru made is similar to the German policy towards the Syrian refugees, as the German government keeps them in camps when they arrive, by doing so they will avoid interfering in Syria, which in this case the refugees are the "guests" of Germany.
Many would think of the Arab as a primitive, brutalized, and dull character, but if we take in consideration his background, then he is by all accounts a remarkable, decent man, and his action only seem absurd when looked from the perspective of Daru.
First let’s look at the reason why he killed his cousin. When Daru asks him the reason for his crime, he says “he ran away. I ran after him.”
Could it be that the cousin's act of running away, instead of taking full responsibility which constitutes shame and dishonor to the family, and that the Arab was only acting following his customs.
Seen from this point of view, the Arab made the best decision executing his cousin. And we can also understand the reason why he did not run away which is because he refuses to be like his cousin and desert when false accusations are made toward him.
The ethical understanding of the Arab is different than the world he is in, and this isolates him because he doesn't comprehend that what he did was a crime. When Daru asks him if he was sorry for what he did the Arab found no logic in the question, should he feel sorry about the killing if it was the honorable thing to do? Sadly his way of thinking leads to his death, because he did not understand that to the French mind, he is evil.
He then deliver himself to the police expecting to have a fair trial and to be found not guilty.
If the Arab ran away and became sheltered with the travelers then he would see himself as the weakling and criminal. And his action of delivering himself is explained by his experience as a guest of Daru's where he received honorable treatment which seems to have inspired an emotional response in him which made him believe he will be treated fairly, when judged for his crime.
Which show the tremendous mistake that Daru made by choosing to be passive and to not make a choice, which is resembling to the case of Rwanda’s genocide in 1994, where the world watched thousands of people dying but did not intervene to stop it because it was between the people of the same country in this example (The Arab prisoner).
In the world of Camus, a person can attempt to give meaning and nobility to his life through decisive, even rebellious, action to counteract immoral activity, but without a perfect, and fair judgement, there is no morality or immorality.
No comments:
Post a Comment