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Camus' L'Etranger

Author(s): Carl A. Viggiani


Source: PMLA, Vol. 71, No. 5 (Dec., 1956), pp. 865-887
Published by: Modern Language Association
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PMLA
PUBLICATIONS OF
THE-MODERN-LANGUAGE-ASSOCIATION-OF-AMERICA
Issued Five Times a Tear
.VOLUME LXXI D)ECEM UBER 1956 NUrMBE R 5 VOLUME LXXI DECEMBER 1956 NUMBER 5
CAMUS' L'ETRANGER
BY CARL A. VIGGIANI
M OST of the critical
writing
on
L'Etranger
has been focused on the
world view or
philosophy
that it
expresses.
This is
certainly
legitimate, especially
since Camus himself sees the novel as an incarna-
tion of "a drama of the
intelligence."'
As a
result, however,
some of the
formal and
imaginative aspects
of
L'Etranger
have been
neglected,
with
the further result that the full
meaning
of the novel has remained hidden.
On the
surface, L'Etranger gives
the
appearance
of
being
an
extremely
simple though carefully planned
and written book. In
reality,
it is a
dense and rich
creation,
full of undiscovered
meanings
and formal
qualities.
It would take a book at least the
length
of the novel to make a
complete analysis
of
meaning
and
form,
and the
correspondences
of
meaning
and
form,
in
L'Etranger. My purpose
here is less ambitious. I
should like first to take
up aspects
of the novel that have not
yet
been studied
sufficiently, principal among
them
(and
in this
order),
the use of time and structure as thematic
devices, myth, names, pat-
terns of character and
situation,
and
symbols,
and
then,
in
conclusion,
to use the
knowledge gained
as the basis for an
explication
of the mean-
ing
of the novel as a whole.
Frequent
and
fairly lengthy
references will
be made to others of Camus'
books, simply
because the novel is incom-
prehensible except
in the context of all his
works;
it is
hoped
that what
may appear
to be
digressions
will be
justified by
the
light they
throw on
the novel.
Camus
formally
divided
L'Etranger
into two
parts,
the first
ending
with the
shooting
of the
Arab,
and the second with Meursault's tirade
against
the
prison chaplain. Underlying
the formal
division,
there is a
1
Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe (Paris, 1942), p.
134. The editions of Camus' other works referred
to in this
article,
all
published
in
Paris, by Gallimard,
are the
following:
Noces
(1950);
L'Etranger (1953);
Letfres d un ami allemand
(1948);
Le
Malentendu, Caligula (1944);
La
Peste
(1947);
L'Etat de
Siege (1948);
L'Homme rvoltd
(1951);
L'Etd
(1954).
865
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
narrative division into three
parts,
the middle
part ending
with the con-
viction and death sentence. This
tripartite
division is marked not
only
by
the nature of the events and the
development
of the hero in each
part,
but also
by
the time
plan
of the
novel,
which
gives
it its structure.
The last
chapter
of the book will hereafter be referred to as Part
III.
The events are narrated
by
the main
character, Meursault,
a clerk in
what seems to be an
export-import
firm located in
Algiers.
We are
given
no
positive
information about his
age;
he is a
young man,
and like most
of Camus'
heroes,
he is
probably
around
thirty.
In Part
I,
the events are
narrated
day by day,
as if Meursault were
keeping
a
journal.
The shoot-
ing
takes
place
on the
eighteenth day,
a
Sunday.
Part II covers a
period
of a little over eleven
months,
and the whole
period
is narrated retro-
spectively.
No time references are
given
in Part III: the narrator talks
of his meditations and of one
event,
his interview with the
chaplain.
This is a
personal
chronicle. Like Rieux and Tarrou in La
Peste,
Meur-
sault is
writing
a chronicle of
death,
but with one
important
difference:
whereas in La Peste time is
only
a
necessary
and convenient framework
that
finally disappears,
in
L'Etranger
it is
part
of the essence of the
chronicler's
story.
The events of
L'Etranger
are few in number and
easy
to recall. The
principal
ones are
repeated
here for reference
purposes
and in order to
make the time-structure-theme
relationship
clearer. The
sequence
of
events is as follows:
PART i
CHAP. i
First
day: Thursday.
News of mother's death. Arrival at
Marengo.
The wake.
Second
day: Friday.
The funeral
procession
and burial.
CHAP. ii
Third
day: Saturday.
Meursault's
meeting
with Marie at beach.
They spend
night together.
Fourth
day: Sunday.
Marie has left. Meursault
spends
a restless
day.
CHAP. iii
Fifth day: Monday.
Meursault
agrees
to
help
Sintes
punish
sweetheart.
CHAP. iv
Eleventh
day: Sunday. Day
at the beach with Marie.
CHAP. V
?th
day: weekday during
third week. Meursault
accepts Raymond's
invitation
to
spend following Sunday
at friend's beach house.
Agrees
to
marry
Marie.
CHAP. vi
Eighteenth day. Sunday.
The murder.
866
Carl A.
Viggiani
PART II
CHAP. i
No
precise
time
given.
Meursault is
interrogated by prosecuting attorney.
CHAP. ii
No
precise
time
given.
Meursault relates
prison experiences
and
meditations,
Marie's visit.
(Eleven
months have
elapsed
since
murder.)
CHAP. iii
First
day
of trial.
(June,
a
year
after
murder.)
Witnesses heard.
CHAP. iv
Second
day of
trial. Meursault sentenced to death after final
speeches
of at
torneys.
PART III
CHAP. V
No
precise
time
given:
sometime
after
trial. Meursault's meditations on death
and
possibility
of
escape.
The
chaplain's
visit.
In all of Part i the time references are numerous and
precise.
The
opening paragraph
of
every chapter except Chapter
v has some refer-
ence to
time,
such as "c'est
aujourd'hui samedi,"
or "Le dimanche . . "
Each
major
and minor event within the
chapters
takes
place
at a care-
fully specified
time of the
day: "J'ai pris
l'autobus a deux
heures";
"En
principe,
l'enterrement est fixe a dix heures du matin." "Le soir etait
tombe
brusquement."
Even when it is
given indirectly,
the time is
precise: "J'ai pense
aux
collegues
du bureau. A cette
heure,
ils se levaient
pour
aller au travail." "Le soleil tombait
presque d'aplomb
sur le sable."
Camus is so careful in the
preparation
of his timetable that in at least
one
place
he
trips
himself
up:
in
narrating
the events of the eleventh
day (the
second
Sunday),
he
begins
with "Ce matin" and the next to
the last sentence in the
chapter
reads: "Mais il
fallait
que
je
me leve
t6t le lendemain"
(my italics),
where one would
expect ilfaut
and demain.
The time of the
year
is
implied
in
passing:
Meursault
reports
that
he,
Masson,
and
Raymond
talked about
spending
the month of
August
together
at the beach and
sharing expenses.
Either the events are
taking
place during
that month and the men are
making plans
for the
following
year,
or
they
are
taking place
in
June
or
July.
What is
important,
in
any case,
is that what
happens
takes
place during
the summer. The
shooting
occurs on a
Sunday,
a
day
Meursault
says
he does not like.
In
Chapters
i and ii of Part II Meursault relates the events of eleven
months
("Et
au bout des onze mois
qu'a
dure cette instruction ..
."),
principally
his
interrogation by
the
prosecuting attorney
and the
experi-
ence of
prison
life.
Chapters
iii and iv are an account of the
two-day
867
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
trial. In the whole of Part II the
precise day by day
account
gives way
to a
rapid
flow of time whose events are narrated
by
a character for
whom time is
rapidly becoming meaningless. Occasionally, precise
time
references are made
("A sept
heures et demie du
matin,
on est venu
me
chercher"),
but no
day
is ever
given.
All this takes
place during
the
fall, winter,
and
spring
months. The trial
begins
with the summer
heat, during
the latter
part
of
June.
In Part II the
significance
of
time, implicit
in the whole of the first
part,
becomes
explicit.
For
example,
the time of the mother's
death,
which the
narrator,
in his
opening paragraph,
said was a matter of no
importance,
becomes crucial at the trial. One of the most
damaging
pieces
of evidence
against
Meursault at the trial is that he
began
his
liaison with Marie "le lendemain" of his mother's funeral. This is
part
of the ironic
recapitulation
of his career
during
the
trial,
of which more
will be said below. More
important,
for the
moment,
is the fact that
Meursault himself
begins
to talk about
time,
at first
ironically
but
finally
in
plain
terms. In
prison,
he dwells on memories of sexual ex-
periences.
He
says
that in a sense these memories unbalanced
him, but,
"dans un
autre,
cela tuait le
temps" (p. 111).
One
page later,
he
repeats
the
phrase:
"Toute la
question,
encore une
fois,
etait de tuer le
temps."
And
again
on the
following page:
"Il me restait alors six heures a
tuer." We
realize,
as we encounter the
expression
the third
time,
that
like so
many
of the
characters, images
and statements in Part I
("Cela
ne veut rien
dire," "I1
n'y
avait
pas d'issue,"
the
petite automate, etc.),
it has a
meaning
that transcends the banal notion it seems to
convey.
For the whole
concept
and
meaning
of time are
literally being
killed in
and
by
the hero's
experience.
Soon after the third ironic restatement of
the theme it
appears undisguised: "J'avais
bien lu
qu'on
finissait
par
perdre
la notion du
temps
en
prison.
Mais cela n'avait
pas beaucoup
de
sens
pour
moi.
Je
n'avais
pas compris
a
quel point
les
jours pouvaient
etre a la fois
longs
et courts . . . tellement distendus
qu'il
finissaient
par
deborder les uns sur les autres.... Pour
moi,
c'etait sans cesse le
meme
jour qui
deferlait dans ma cellule"
(pp. 114-115).
That time has
spun practically
to a standstill is indicated
by
the
opening
sentence
oc
Chapter
iii of Part II:
"Je peux
dire
qu'au
fond l'6te a tres vite
remplace
l'ete"
(p. 117).
After the two
days
of the
trial,
time
stops.
In Part iii there are no
precise
time indications.
Only
one event oc-
curs,
Meursault's violent interview with the
prison chaplain.
The re-
mainder of the
chapter
is devoted to Meursault's
speculations
on
death,
and the
meaning given
to life
by
death. References to time are
replaced
by symbols
of eternal return and
permanence: day
and
night, sky,
and
stars. Whereas the first
paragraphs
of
chapters
in Part i contained time
868
Carl A.
Viggiani
references,
the first
paragraph
of the last
chapter speaks
of the
sky
and
the
recurrence
of
day
and
night:
"De celle-ci
[his cell], lorsque je
suis
allonge, je
vois le ciel et
je
ne vois
que
lui. Toutes mes
journ6es
se
passent
a
regarder
sur son
visage
le declin des couleurs
qui
conduit le
jour
a la nuit"
(p. 152).
As he
meditates,
he
contemplates
the
sky: "Je
m'etendais, je regardais
le
ciel, je m'efforgais
de
m'y int&lesser"
(p. 158).
And when
finally,
after
assaulting
the
chaplain,
his calm has been re-
stored and he feels
ready
to face his
execution,
he awakens "avec des
6toiles sur le
visage" (p. 171).
Time, then,
has
stopped
with the conclusion of the novel. The struc-
ture of the
novel,
the
development
of the hero's
career,
and the time-flow
in which the
development
takes
place
move
along together
from the
particular
to the most
general
and universal: In Part
I,
a
chapter
for
each
major event,
six
chapters
for the account of
eighteen days,
a de-
tailed,
if
laconic,
narration of even trivial
incidents, parts
of each
day
carefully specified;
in Part
ii,
four
chapters
for the narration of the events
of about a
year;
in Part
II,
one
chapter
in which time has vanished and
in which
virtually nothing happens.
The
development
of the structure is
paralleled by
the
metamorphosis
of the hero from a
purely
sentient
consciousness into a man who
begins
to reflect
upon
himself and his
relations with men in the second
part
of the
novel,
and who
finally
transcends the self and
society
in
speculations concerning
the ultimate
meaning
of life and death. That
time, then,
informs and is an
integral
part
of both structure and theme in the novel is clear. The
precise
role
that the
concept
of time
plays
in the
development
of
L'Etranger
will be
discussed when we take
up
the
theme,
in the
concluding portion
of this
study.
The
point
of view in
L'Etranger
is
only slightly
different from that in
La Peste. In
both,
the events are narrated
by
the
principals:
Meursault
in
L'Etranger,
Rieux and Tarrou in La Peste. The difference lies
prin-
cipally
in the
greater objectivity
of Rieux's
account,
for Tarrou's
journal
is as
personal
as Meursault's. Camus'
seeming predilection
for this
narrative device is
revealing. Despite
his
fundamentally
romantic na-
ture,
Camus has tried to
become,
and to a certain extent he has succeeded
in
becoming
"un ecrivain
objectif."2
His first
works, however, gave
him
away.
L'Envers et L'Endroit and Noces are
autobiography.
There is
abundant evidence that the rest of his works are
equally
autobio-
graphical,
that his heroes are fictional
projections
of his own
developing
self.
Gradually,
however,
Camus has drawn further
away
from his
fictions. In La
Peste,
for
example,
the hero is a
composite
of several char-
2
"J'appelle objectif
un auteur
qui
se
propose
des
sujets
sans
jamais
se
prendre
lui-meme
comme
sujet" (L'Et, p. 132).
869
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
acters,
and thus the distance between creator and character is increased.
A similar
development
has taken
place
in his
plays:
Les Justes is far
more
"objective"
than
Caligula. L'Etranger, however,
is
midway
between the
lyricist
and the
semi-objective
novelist and
playwright;
it is a
personal
confession made in a
thinly disguised journal by
a fic-
tional
surrogate
of the author.
Camus transforms this
personal
confession into a
relatively
im-
personal
fiction
by
means of a set of ironic
devices, principal among
them,
the reconstruction of
myth
in a modern
idiom,
multivalent
names,
characters, images,
and
language,
and
occasionally, literary allusiveness,
of which
only
the main features will be touched
upon
here.
The central ironic device in
L'Etranger
is its reconstruction of the
Sisyphus myth.
The
irony
arises out of the transformation of the hero-
antagonist
of the
gods
into an office clerk who
spends
his
days working
on bills of
lading
and the rest of his time in a
variety
of dull and sordid
adventures. The eternal
punishment
of
Sisyphus
is
expressed
in a con-
temporary image
of
absurdity:
the
deadening
routine of the life of an
office worker. As Camus
puts
it in Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe: "Lever,
tram-
way, quatre
heures de bureau ou
d'usine, repas, tramway, quatre
heures
de
travail, repas,
sommeil et lundi mardi mercredi
jeudi
vendredi et
samedi sur le meme
rythme
...
"
(p. 27).
This is not the whole
image;
to it is added the final awareness of the
mortality
and
meaninglessness
of
life,
and the
immortality
and senselessness of death. What interests
Camus most in the
Sisyphus myth
is the moment when
Sisyphus
reaches
the
top
of the hill and watches his stone roll down. That
moment, says
Camus,
is "celle de la conscience." In his awareness of his
eternally
futile task
Sisyphus
is
superior
to his
destiny
and
stronger
than his
stone. What makes the
myth tragic
is the condemned man's awareness
(p. 165).
The
counterpart
of this in
L'Etranger
is the last
chapter,
in
which the hero achieves absolute
lucidity.
Grafted onto the
Sisyphus myth
in
L'Etranger
are two more tradi-
tional
mythical figures,
the doomed man
(CEdipus)
and the sacrificial
God-man, or,
as Camus
prefers
to
put it,
the
man-god.
That Camus
had these
figures very
much in mind when he wrote
L'Etranger
is in-
dicated
by
his discussion of them in Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe,
in which
they
and
Sisyphus
are
represented
as
prototypes
of the absurd hero. The
CEdipus myth
is reflected in the
complicated trap
set for Meursault
by
chance,
the
sea,
and the
sun,
and in his final attitude of reconciliation.
The
man-god figure appears
to have been
suggested
to Camus
by (or
associated in his mind
with)
the careers of Christ and of Dostoevski's
Kirilov,
the
first,
a
symbol
of divine
self-sacrifice,
the
second,
a sacrificial
hero who
rejects God, thereby becoming
himself
God,
and who affirms
870
Carl A.
Viggiani
871
his
liberty
and his love of
humanity by
what Camus calls a
"pedagogical
suicide."3 It can be
argued
that these
archetypes
are found in hundreds
of works since
antiquity
and that their
reappearance
in Camus' novel
is not
particularly significant.
The answer to this
objection
is the novel
itself and Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe,
where the author's
preoccupation
with
them is
explicit
and clear. His use of
myth
is not unlike that of
Joyce
and
Eliot,
that
is, deliberately
ironic and intended to
bring together
in
the reader's mind the
mythical figure
and the
contemporary hero;
and
like
Eliot,
Camus
provides
his reader with a
commentary
that reveals
the connection.
This central ironic device has its
counterparts
in the names of the
characters in the
novel,
which are for the most
part
multivalent. For
Camus,
the
naming
of characters seems to be both a conscious and an
unconscious
way
of
adding
dimensions of
meaning
to the world he creates.
There are four main classes of names in his works: historical
names;
allegorical names,
like Nada and La Peste in L'Etat de
Siege;
common
nouns that indicate
profession, trade, family relationship
or the
like,
such
as the
juge d'instruction,
the
aumonier,
and La Mere in Le
Malentendu;
proper names,
some of which Camus
may
have
invented,
but most of
which can be found in a
dictionary
of names.
Many
of the latter seem to
have some
special meaning
for the author. In what follows I should like
to
suggest
some of the
possible meanings
and uses of the names borne
by
Camus' characters.
Obviously,
what will be said can
only
be tentative
and
inconclusive;
I avoid all the
necessary qualifications only
for the
sake of
brevity.
The first
category
of names needs no comment. The second two cate-
3
A few
quotations
from the
chapters
on Kirilov and
Sisyphus
will make clear the links
that connect Meursault with these
figures:
"En ce sens
seulement, Jesus
incarne bien tout
le drame humain. Il est l'homme
parfait,
etant celui
qui
a realise la condition la
plus
ab-
surde. II n'est
pas
le
Dieu-homme,
mais l'homme-dieu. Et comme
lui,
chacun de nous
peut
etre crucifie et
dupe-l'est
dans une certaine mesure"
(p. 146).
"On
apergoit
desormais le
sens de la
premisse
kirilovienne: 'Si Dieu n'existe
pas, je
suis dieu.' Devenir
dieu,
c'est
seulement etre libre sur cette
terre,
ne
pas
servir un etre immortel . . . Kirilov se sacrifie
donc. Mais s'il est
crucifie,
il ne sera
pas dupe.
I1 reste
homme-dieu, persuade
d'une mort
sans
avenir, penetre
de la melancolie
evangelique" (p. 147).
In the
chapter
on
Sisyphus,
Camus
brings together
and blends the 3
figures: "J'imagine
encore
Sisyphe
revenant vers
son rocher ... c'est la victoire du rocher .... L'immense d6tresse est
trop
lourde a
porter.
Ce sont nos nuits de Gethsemani. Mais les verites ecrasantes
perissent
d'etre reconnues.
Ainsi.
CEdipe
obeit d'abord au destin sans le savoir. A
partir
du moment oil il
sait,
sa
tragedie
commence. Mais dans le meme
instant, aveugle
et
desesper6,
il reconnalt
que
le
seul lien
qui
le rattache au
monde,
c'est la main fraiche d'une
jeune
fille. Une
parole
demesuree retentit alors:
'Malgre
tant
d'epreuves,
mon
Age
avanc6 et la
grandeur
de mon
Ame me font
juger que
tout est bien.'
L'CEdipe
de
Sophocle,
comme le Kirilov de Dostoev-
sky,
donne ainsi la formule de la victoire absurde. La
sagesse antique rejoint
l'heroisme
moderne"
(pp. 166-167).
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
gories
reflect the
allegorizing tendency
of Camus'
imagination;
in the
third
category
the characters
designated
are not
only
realistic characters
but
types
as well. The
largest
and most
important category
of names is
the
last,
most of which are traditional. The
following
are
among
the
prin-
cipal
men's and women's
given
names and surnames in Camus' novels
and
plays (with
the
exception
of
Caligula): Meursault, Salamano,
Mas-
son, Othon,
Thomas
Perez,
Le
Juge Casado, Raymond Sintes, Raymond
Rambert,
Bernard
Rieux, Joseph Grand, Cottard, Castel,
Pere
Paneloux,
Emmanuel, Celeste, Jean Tarrou, Jan,
Ivan
Kaliayev (called
Yanek in
Les
Justes), Diego;
Marie
Cardona, Maria, Martha, Victoria, Jeanne.
A number of
patterns
and
correspondences
can be noted. First of
all,
a
predilection
for certain names:
Jean,
its non-French
equivalents, Jan,
Ivan
(Yanek),
and its feminine
counterpart, Jeanne4; Raymond (Sintes
and
Rambert);
Thomas and its
derivative, Masson;
Marie
(Cardona)
and Maria. Second: certain names are intended to communicate an
idea, image,
or
feeling,
in some cases with an ironic
overtone;
Masson is
"un
grand type, massif [my italics)
de taille et
d'epaules" (L'Etranger,
p. 75); Othon,
the name of a
judge,
one of the
many symbols
of au-
thority
who
populate
Camus'
works,
has a
distinctly
harsh Germanic
ring;
Le
Juge
Casado means 'the married
judge'; Joseph
Grand is of
course the
very opposite
of
great,
and there is
nothing very heavenly
about
Celeste;
the name Cottard has a touch of baseness that is
ap-
propriate
to the demented black marketeer who
rings
down the cur-
tain of La Peste with an
explosion
of unmotivated
violence;
Castel
(OF
and It.
'castle,'
'fort')
is another
healer,
or secular
saint,
whose name
suggests
the virtue of a man who
develops
a serum
against
the
plague
bacillus. Third: Camus seems to be intent on
using
names that have a
peculiarly
New Testament character or that are in some
way important
in the Christian tradition:
Marie, Martha, Jean, Thomas, Diego, Joseph,
Emmanuel
(Manuel
in
Noces)
are all New Testament
personages
of the
first
importance,
as all but one are in Camus'
works;
Victoria denotes a
virtue
traditionally
associated with
Mary,
the mater
gloriosa,
and in
Christian art
Mary
is
frequently represented
as the "Santa Maria della
Vittoria";
Bernard is the name of one of the
greatest
Christian
saints,
known for his devotion to the
Virgin Mary,
and in La Peste it is the
name of the
principal
secular saint. Fourth: the names Le Vieux and
Rieux seem to be
slight phonetic
deformations of dieu. In Le Malentendu
Le
Vieux,
described as "sans
Age,"
is a
grotesque surrogate
of
God,
as
4
Jean
is the name of one of Camus' children. The name of the hero of La
Chute,
Camus'
latest
book,
is
Jean-Baptiste
Clamence. It
might
be added
that, according
to
Camus,
Ivan
Karamazov
begins "l'entreprise
essentielle de la
revolte, qui
est de substituer au
royaume
de la
grace
celui de la
justice"
(L'Homme rvoltt, p. 77).
872
Carl A.
Viggiani
the last scene of the
play
makes
abundantly
clear. That Rieux is also
a
disguised
form of dieu is
perhaps
more
conjectural;
evidence for the
assertion lies
mainly
in Camus'
preoccupation
with the
figure
of the
homme-dieu,
manifested in most of his
works,
in the fact that in La Peste
Rieux
plays
the role of an
homme-dieu,
and
lastly,
in Camus' constant
name-punning
and
allegorizing,
as in the name Le Vieux. Fifth: if one
can assume that Camus' dramatic and novelistic heroes are fictional
projections
of his own
developing self,
and that in La Peste those who
fight
with Rieux
against
death are features of a
composite portrait,
then it is
probably
not a coincidence that the names
Rambert, Castel,
Tarrou,
and even Paneloux
(a
character who has taken the existential
leap
but who is an extension of Camus' ideal of the sacrificial
saint)
are
names that echo
(with slight distortion)
the
phonemes
of the name
Albert Camus.
From what has been said it becomes clear that in the names that
Camus uses one can often find
meanings
that
clarify
the whole of a
par-
ticular work. This is true of
L'Etranger, although apparently
not of the
name of its hero. Because of the
suggestivity
of the
name,
it has excited
the interest and
curiosity
of more than one reader.
However,
in
discussing
this
study
with
me,
M. Camus said that he found the name at dinner one
evening
when a bottle of Meursault wine was served. He added
that,
de-
spite
the
suggestivity
of the
name,
he did not
consciously
associate it
with
any particular
idea or
feeling.
He did
say, however,
that Salamano
was more than
just
a name to
him,
and it
is,
of
course,
not an
inappro-
priate
name for a character whose
dog
is covered with brown scabs and
spots,
who resembles his
dog,
and who has
"[des]
mains crouteuses"
(p.
61).
The idea of
'dirty
hands' that the Italianate name evokes reinforces
the
feeling
of
disgust produced by
both man and
dog.
The names of three more characters in
L'Etranger require
some com-
ment: Thomas
Perez,
la mere
(maman),
and Marie. As we shall
see,
the
mother,
the absent or dead father who
appears
in a
variety
of
disguises,
and the son constitute the matrix of Camus' fictional world. The other
characters in his books and
plays, sweethearts, wives, mistresses, sisters,
and sea on the one
hand,
and
judges, prosecuting attorneys, policemen,
old
people
and sun on the
other,
tend to be subsumed
by
the central
figures
of the mother and the father. In this
light,
Thomas
Perez,
the
name of Meursault's mother's
"fiance,"
becomes more than a common
Franco-Spanish
name. If one
disregards
the z of the
surname,
it becomes
the French word for 'father,' which on one level is
precisely
the role
played by
the character. In la mere we have one of the two or three
key
words in Camus'
vocabulary.
There is a
great
deal of internal evidence
in Camus' works that
suggests
the identification on an unconscious level
873
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
of mother and
sea,
of la mere and la
mer,
which are as
omnipresent
in
his works as the sun and father
figures,
and as
intimately
involved in
the hero's fate. It is
perhaps only
coincidence that the names of the
sister, mistress,
and wife in Le Malentendu and
L'Etranger
are named
Martha, Maria, Marie,
all of which
suggest
mere and
mer,
and that the
old
people's
home in
L'Etranger
is located at
Marengo (an
actual
place
name),
and that
they
also
give
a
slightly
distorted echo of
part
of the
hero's
name,
and Camus' obsessive
theme,
la mort. But it is the kind of
coincidence that is
profoundly revealing,
and
particularly
for an under-
standing
of
L'Etranger.
"Etre
classique,"
said
Camus,
"c'est en meme
temps
se
repeter
et
savoir se
repeter."
His dictum
applies
not
only
to the
way
in which he
names
many
of his characters but also to the
types
of characters and
basic situations in his novels and
plays.
In
L'Etranger, Meursault,
the
main
character,
murders and is condemned to
death;
and in some
way,
all of Camus' heroes and heroines suffer or watch others suffer a similar
fate.
Caligula
commits wholesale murders and sexual crimes and is
assassinated. La Mere and Martha drown
Jan
and then commit suicide.
Yanek assassinates the Grand Duke and is condemned to death.
Diego
struggles against
La Secretaire and La Peste but dies after
gaining
a
momentary victory.
The heroes of La Peste either suffer death them-
selves,
or
they
witness the death of loved
ones,
or
they fight against
a
universal death
sentence,
the
plague.
The obsessive
image
of the con-
demned man
(or woman)
dominates even Camus' short
essays
and
philosophical
treatises.
Noces,
for
example,
which is informed
by
a
pas-
sion for
life,
has as its
epigraph
a
quotation
from Stendhal that refers to
an
execution,
and the idea of death
regularly
breaks into this
orgy
of life.
The
opening
sentence of Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe
declares that there is
only
one
really
serious
philosophical question,
suicide. In L'Homme
revolte,
the main theme is murder. The obsession is
everywhere
in Camus' writ-
ings, coupled
with an intense
passion
for life. In his novels and
plays,
the characters
constantly
re-enact his
grim preoccupation
in a ritual of
homicide and suicide. In the works that followed
Caligula, however,
and
beginning
with
L'Etranger,
the role
played by
the main character or
characters is that of the sacrificial hero who suffers death for the love
of
others,
that
they may
live or live better in some
way. Diego, Rieux,
Tarrou, Rambert, Grand,
and Castel are
literally
healers who sacrifice
themselves in a
fight against
death. Yanek
gives
his life so that his
compatriots
will have a chance for a better life. This
development
be-
gins,
as it will be
seen,
with the
opening
of Meursault to the "tendre
indifference du monde."
The other
principals
of
L'Etranger
are the
mother,
the deceased
father,
874
Carl A.
Viggiani
Marie,
and the sea and the sun. This can be
put
in a more
revealing,
though awkward, way, by saying
that the other
principals
are the
mother-sea-Marie and
father-sun-judge-prosecuting attorney figures.
One need have no
psychoanalytical
bias to
recognize
the
identity
of the
three female forms. The names of two of them are
homonyms,
and the
third name not
only
resembles the first two
phonetically
but is the name
of the
type
of the
mother,
who has
traditionally
been associated with the
sea,
But Camus' other works are themselves the best
proof
of the
oneness of the three. The
figure
of the mother
appears
in some form in
all of Camus' creative
works,
even if
only
in a
passing reference,
as in
Noces. In Le Malentendu she murders the son
by drowning him;
in
L'Etranger
she is
ultimately responsible
for the son's
death;
she
replaces
the
dying
wife in La
Peste;
she is the
long-suffering
mother of Victoria
in L'Etat de
Siege;
in Les Justes she
appears
as the wife of the Grand
Duke,
whom Ivan has blown
up. Only
for
Caligula
is it
necessary
to
invoke the benevolent shade of Freud to find the
mother,
this time in the
figure
of
Drusilla, Caligula's sister,
with whom he has had incestuous
relations,
and whose death sends him into a homicidal
frenzy.
The
figure
of the
young
sweetheart-wife-sister is also
omnipresent,
and
plays
as
important
a role in the
recurring
death ritual as the
mother,
either suf-
fering
death or its
consequences,
as in La Peste and Le
Malentendu,
or
deliberately
or otherwise
bringing
the hero closer to
death,
as in L'Etran-
ger
where the
bathing
and movie
episodes help
seal Meursault's
fate,
and
in Les
Justes,
in which Dora makes the bomb that
Kaliayev
throws.
The sister
appears
in one of Camus'
works,
Le
Malentendu,
and is men-
tioned as the cause of the hero's madness in
Caligula.
In both
plays
she
is
intimately
associated with the
mother, consciously
in the first
play,
where she shares with her the role of
murderess,
and
unconsciously
in
Caligula,
in which she is the
object
of incestuous desires.
The last of the
trinity
of characters that dominate Camus' works is
the
usually
deceased father and the
many figures
who
appear
in his
stead. The fathers of Meursault and Tarrou are both dead but
they
remain
(because they
are associated with
capital punishment)
to haunt
their sons' memories and influence their careers. In L'Etat de
Siege,
Le
Juge Casado,
'the married
judge,'
is one of
Diego's antagonists,
and he
insists on
turning Diego
out of the house and
denouncing
him as a
bearer of the
plague.
Elsewhere the father takes the various
shapes
of
the
symbol
of
authority, principally
as a
judge
or
prosecuting attorney
(L'Etranger
and La
Peste),
as
police
officers
(L'Etranger,
Les
Justes,
and
La
Peste, where,
like
Meursault,
Rieux dislikes the
police),
or as
priests
(L'Etranger,
La
Peste).
These characters either condemn the hero to
death,
or are
explicitly
associated in the hero's mind with the death
875
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
sentence,
or
they
are somehow instruments of
imprisonment
or death.
The
priest
is of course the
surrogate
of the ultimate
death-dealing judge.
With the
exception
of Pere
Paneloux,
all of these
figures range
from
unsympathetic
to base in character from the hero's or author's
point
of
view. Almost all the older men in Camus'
works,
as a matter of
fact,
possess
a
generally unpleasant
character.
Among
the minor ones: the
patricians
in
Caligula;
the old asthmatic in La Peste who
spends
his
life
counting peas,
and the old man in the same novel who lures cats to
his
apartment building
and then
spits
on them from the
balcony;
the
old
people
at the wake in
L'Etranger,
who make
sucking
sounds with
their cheeks and who
appear
to be there to
judge
Meursault.
Thus the basic character and situation
pattern
can be summarized as
follows: the
young
hero
(twenty-five
to
thirty-eight years
of
age)
who
murders
and/or
suffers violent
death;
the mother-wife-sweetheart-sister
who is either
directly
involved in the hero's death
and/or
is
killed,
or
dies,
or remains to suffer the
consequences
of the hero's
death;
the father
or
father-figure
who
directly
or otherwise condemns to death or
helps
to
bring
about the condemnation. The other
characters,
few in
number,
are of
relatively
little
importance,
with the
exception
of the
figure
of
the nihilist
(Nada, Stepan, Cottard,
and
Caligula),
whose
significance
will be taken
up
in connection with the
shooting
in
L'Etranger.
The main
impulse
in Camus'
creativity
and the
shape
that it takes
in his works thus seems to
belong
to a classic
psychological category.
Embedded in the character and
plot
structure of his works is the fatal
attraction of the
mother,
the condemnation
by
the
father,
and the
rebellion of the son. The incest leitmotiv that threads
discreetly through
most of Camus' works breaks out into the
open
in
Caligula
and finds
its most
regressive expression
in Le
Malentendu,
in which the son returns
to the mother's
house,
is
put
to
sleep
and then drowned
by
her. Casual
remarks made
by
Camus or one of his characters take on new
meaning
when seen in this
light:
in
Noces,
for
example,
he
says
of
Italy: "Je
ne
m'etonne
plus
que
l'Italie soit la terre des
incestes,
ou du
moins,
ce
qui
est
plus significatif,
des incestes avoues. Car le chemin
qui
va de la
beaute a l'immoralite est
tortueux,
mais certain"
(p. 84).
When he
wishes to
give
an
example
of a monstrous crime in Le
MIythe
de
Sisyphe
he thinks of incest first
(p. 47).
In
"L'Enigme" (L'Ete)
it comes
up
again.5
And Camus lets Meursault
give us,
in his innocent
way,
a
key
6
"Mais
enfin,
on
peut
aussi ecrire sur l'inceste sans
pour
autant s'6tre
prcipit6
sur sa
malheureuse sceur et
je
n'ai lu nulle
part que Sophocle
eit
jamais supprim6
son
pbre
et
d6shonor6 sa mere"
(p. 132).
Camus'
protest
is
perfectly justified.
No
attempt
is
being
made here to
psychoanalyze
Camus. I am
simply pointing
out what I consider to be an
important fact,
and one that
helps
to understand Camus'
symbolism.
876
Carl A.
Viggiani
to
character, novel,
and creator when he makes him
say
that "tous
les Etres sains avaient
plus
ou moins souhait6 la mort de ceux
qu'ils
aimaient"
(p. 94).
It is
part
of the ironic
joke
in
L'Etranger
that Meur-
sault is convicted not
only
for matricide but also for
parricide.
One
last
point
in this connection: Camus' heroes
go
to their deaths with
almost absolute
willingness,
and even a certain
obstinacy;
when
they
struggle innocently against death,
as in the case of
Rieux, Tarrou,
and
Diego,
it is with the
knowledge
that
they
are
sacrificing
themselves.
They give
life for life. We recall that
this, according
to
Camus,
is the
condition of
remaining
faithful to the idea of revolt.
Thus,
out of an
essentially (Edipal impulse
arises not
only
the center of Camus' fictional
world,
but one of the most creative
concepts
of our
times,
the idea of
revolt outlined in L'Homme revolte.
A link between this
psychological impulse
and the fictional world and
world view of Camus is to be found in his use of two ancient
mythic
religious symbols,
the sea and the
sun,
which are
clearly
associated in
his
mind-perhaps
even
consciously-with
the mother and the father.
In most of Camus' works sea and sun are constant and dominant
sym-
bols. A recent article on Camus
by
S.
John
makes it
unnecessary
to
state the main features of Camus' use of these
symbols.
As he
says, they
come
naturally
to a writer raised on the shores of North Africa. In
Camus'
essays
"allusions to the sun
constantly
evoke a
tonality
of
violence"
(this
has to be
qualified);
"the sea features... as the con-
stant solace....
"6
John
examines
briefly
the role of the
symbols
in
L'Etranger,
La
Peste,
Le
Malentendu,
and L'Etat de
Siege,
and he
points
out one of the
symbolic
overtones of the
bathing episodes-the longing
for freedom.
John's study
leaves
only
one
thing unsaid,
the nature of the
relation of these two
symbols
to character
patterns
in Camus'
works,
and
to the
mythic
and
religious
tradition out of which these
symbols
arise.
It
hardly
needs to be said that sea and sun are
religious symbols
of
great antiquity.
In most
religious myths
water
symbolizes
the
pri-
mordial substance out of which all forms arise and to which
they
even-
tually
return. It
possesses magical purifying powers:
in it one is healed
and reborn.
Through
immersion in water
everything
is
dissolved,
all
forms
disintegrate,
all
history
is
abolished; nothing
subsists from what
had existed before immersion. It is the
equivalent
of death on the human
level,
and of
catastrophic
events
(the deluge)
on the cosmic level. He
who is immersed in water arises free of
sin,
without
history, worthy
of
receiving
a new revelation and of
beginning
a new life. While the sun
does not
enjoy
the same
prestige
and
antiquity
in
religious myths
as
water and
sea,
it is nonetheless an
important
and recurrent
symbol
in
6
FS,
ix
(Jan. 1955),
42-53.
877
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
most of them. It is the male
principle, guaranteeing fecundity.
It is also
a
symbol
of God and true
knowledge.
It is
assigned
both destructive and
fecundating powers.
It has been
worshipped
as the "Lord of
Judgment,"
and it is believed
by
some that a
simple
look at the
setting
sun can cause
death.7
This is not meant to
imply
that Camus' use of sun and sea
symbolism
stems from an a
priori knowledge
of their ancient
religious history.
On
the
contrary,
Camus
employs
these
symbols
in a
simple, natural,
some-
times almost
primitive way.
Furthermore the
feelings inspired by
these
phenomena,
and the
psychological
and dramatic functions of the
sym-
bols in Camus' works
closely parallel
those associated with them in
religious myths
from their
very beginnings.
In
Noces, sea, sun, earth,
wind are all
personified by Camus; through
the richness of the sensual
excitation
they provoke
in him he has "un
jour
de noces avec le monde"
(p. 21). Plunging
into the sea is a means of
satisfying
the
longing
that earth
and sea feel for each other
(p. 18).
He
belongs
to a race born of the sun
and the sea
(p. 26).
This sexual union is
paralleled by
that of sun and
earth and of man and earth
(p. 64).
For the author of
Noces,
Plotinian
Unity
is
expressed
in terms of sun and sea
(p. 61).
In
general,
cosmic
phenomena inspire
him with sensations of
love, fertility, youth,
in
short,
with the
glory
of natural life.
In Le
Malentendu,
Martha's
nostalgia
for a land close to the sea and
under the sun causes
Jan's death-by drowning. (This
is the
only
clear
instance of the mortal effect of water in Camus'
works,
but it is essential
for a
complete understanding
of its role in
L'Etranger.)
In La Peste the
plague
hits Oran under the hot sun of
spring
and summer and the beaches
are inaccessible to the
quarantined
Oranais. As autumn and winter
come,
the
plague spends
itself under "un soleil sans force"
(p. 335).
It is at
precisely
this moment that Rieux and Tarrou consecrate their "heure
... de l'amitie" in a sacramental swim in the Mediterranean. In
general,
however, mythic symbolism plays
a minor role in La Peste. This is not
true of L'Etat de
Siege,
in which the sea is
represented
as the mother and
signifies freedom;
the comet
(a
sun
symbol)
is a
sign
of the
plague,
and the
wind from the sea
brings
final liberation from it. There is no cosmic
symbolism
in Les
Justes,
but in
L'Ete,
Camus' latest volume of
essays,
it
reappears
in numerous
pieces ("Le
Minotaure ou La Halte d'Oran"
[1939], "L'Enigme,"
"Retour a
Tipasa,"
and "La Mer au
plus pres.").
Here the sun
symbolizes
the ultimate intuitive vision of the artist:
"Chaque artiste,
sans
doute,
est a la recherche de sa verite. S'il est
grand, chaque
ceuvre l'en
rapproche, ou,
du
moins, gravite
encore
plus
pres
de ce
centre,
soleil
enfoui,
oiu tout doit venir bruler un
jour" (p. 138).
T
M.
Eliade,
Traite d'histoire des
religions (Paris, 1948).
878
Carl A.
Viggiani
Many
of the sea themes of Noces are
repeated
and
developed:
"La
riviere et le fleuve
passent,
la mer
passe
et demeure. C'est ainsi
qu'il
faudrait
aimer,
fidele et
fugitif. J'epouse
la mer"
(p. 174).
"Grande
mer,
toujours labouree, toujours vierge,
ma
religion
avec la nuit! Elle nous
lave et nous rassassie dans ses sillons
steriles,
elle nous libere et nous
tient debout"
(p. 187).
As in traditional
religious
and
mythic symbolism, then,
in Camus'
works the sea bears the attributes of the mother: it
signifies fertility, life,
freedom, love, sexuality,
and
regeneration;
it also stands for
death,
however. The
sun,
on the other
hand,
has the characteristics of the
father: it weds sea and
earth,
it is the
image
of
truth,
it
overpowers
and
destroys. Together, they
are
symbolic representations
of the forces
which dominate the fictional heroes and heroines of Camus' novels and
nonhistorical
plays.
What has been said thus far makes it clear that
any reading
of L'Etran-
ger
that
approaches
it as if it were a
piece
of realistic fiction is bound to
fail. What the defense
attorney says
of the trial is an
apt description
of
the novel: "Voila
l'image
de ce
proces.
Tout est vrai et rien n'est vrai!"
Its
language
tends to be
realistic,
and its characters and
setting
are
drawn from the real
world;
but as a
whole,
the novel is a
parable
and must
be so
interpreted.
The main theme
developed
in the novel is death and
the
meaning
of life that comes out of a confrontation with death. Linked
to the main theme are a number of
subsidiary themes, which,
like the
theme of
death,
run
through
most of the works of Camus: the
absurd,
revolt, time, lucidity; isolation, estrangement, imprisonment;
the
dignity
and
divinity
of
man; fraternity
and
solidarity, love; innocence, justice,
humiliation. At one
point
or another in
L'Etranger
all of these
subsidiary
themes are
developed
as variations on the main theme.
The hero and narrator of
L'Etranger
has an
occupation given
him
by
the author
expressly
to universalize the man and his situation. He is a
clerk,
the clerk of Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe
who one
day
discovers the ab-
surdity
of his existence. The choice of a clerk as hero is
ironic;
the face-
less,
almost
anonymous
office
worker,
characteristic of
contemporary
Western
society, plays
the role of the traditional hero who faced death
on the
path
to a new life and revelation.
Part I
depicts
the condition of
absurdity
without consciousness.
Meursault is "l'homme
quotidien,"
or "l'aventurier du
quotidien,"
as
Camus calls the absurd hero in Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe. Being
a
"quotidian
adventurer,"
every day,
indeed
every moment,
is
important
to
him;
and
thus,
the
daily account,
the
precise
time
schedule;
thus the
style,
in
which,
as Sartre has
pointed out,
each sentence is a
present.8
He is
8
"Explication
de
l'Etranger,"
Cahiers du Sud
(fevrier 1943).
879
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
almost
pure
sentience: he
hears, touches, sees, tastes, smells;
each sense
is
acute,
and his
reports
are
vivid,
but while he has
vague
intuitions and
premonitions,
he knows
nothing.
His
pleasures
are a succession of sensual
experiences: smoking, eating, swimming,
sexual love. For the absurd
hero all
experiences
are
equivalent,
so
long
as the
subject
is
aware;
the
present,
and the succession of
presents
before a sensitive consciousness is
his ideal. Like Don
Juan,
one of the four
types
of the absurd
man,
Meur-
sault lives
according
to an ethic of
quantity,
"au contraire du saint
que
tend vers la
qualite."9
It can be
objected,
of
course,
that Meursault is
neither a Don
Juan,
nor a
conqueror,
nor an
actor,
nor a
creator,
and
that his
experiences
in Part I are
hardly
worth
making
a fuss about. But
that is
just
the
point.
In a world in which
everything
and
everyone
is
privileged
and therefore
equivalent, smoking
a
cigarette
and
clipping
mineral salts advertisements rank with the
ecstasy
of
loving,
or
reading
Shakespeare.
In an absurd world not
only
all
sensations,
but all acts
are
equivalent. Writing
a letter for a
pimp
who wants to
punish
a cheat-
ing prostitute-mistress
is no better and no worse than
any
other
act,
including marriage.
No
hierarchy
of values exists in a world in which one
can
deny anything
but "ce
chaos,
ce hasard roi et cette divine
equiva-
lence
qui
nait de l'anarchie."10
In Part I Meursault is surrounded
by
what Camus calls
"[des]
murs
absurdes."1' The exterior world is
dense, foreign,
and hostile. It refuses
to be
known, although
it can be described. In
addition,
there is some-
thing
inhuman and mechanical about what Meursault
perceives.
In
Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe
Camus uses the
image
of a man seen
gesticulating
through
the
glass
window of a
telephone
booth to communicate this
idea. In
L'Etranger
the idea is
expressed
not
only by
the succession of
events in the narrator's
life,
but also more
directly
in the character of the
petite automate,
who
appears suddenly
for no
apparent
reason and then
disappears, only
to return
during
the trial. She sits
opposite
Meursault
at Celeste's restaurant: "Elle avait des
gestes
saccades .... Elle s'est
assise et a consulte fievreusement la carte.... Elle... a commande
immediatement tous ses
plats
d'une voix
precipitee
...
"
She takes out
a radio
program
twelve
pages long
and checks
every single program
listed. She finishes her meal. "Puis elle s'est
levee,
a remis sa
jaquette
avec les memes
gestes precis
d'automate et elle est
partie....
J'ai
pens6 qu'elle
etait bizarre... " The word bizarre
appears
two or three
times in this novel: the first
time,
it is used
by
Marie to describe Meur-
sault,
two
pages
before the
appearance
of the odd
lady.
In an author as
9
Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe, pp. 88,
100-101. Camus had
already
remarked
(p. 86)
that the
absurd hero
"par
la
simple quantite
des
exp6riences
battrait tous les records.!!
10
Ibid., p.
73.
u
Ibid., p.
24.
880
Carl A.
Viggiani
careful as
Camus,
this is
probably intentional,
his aim
being
to mirror
Meursault in the
image
of the
petite
automate.
Three events occur in the "succession of
presents"
in Part I that add
new dimensions to the absurd condition of Meursault's existence: the
death and burial of the
mother,
the
meeting
with Marie at the
seashore,
and the
shooting
of the
Arab,
each of which occurs under a
broiling
sun.
We have
already
seen
how,
on the level of the
unconscious, sea, mother,
sweetheart,
and
sexuality,
and on the other
hand, sun, father,
and
death,
are linked in Camus' works. We have also seen that sea and sun are
transformed into
symbolic
entities that control the actions and lives of
many
of Camus' characters. In
L'Etranger
sea and sun lead
directly
to
the
shooting
of the
Arab, attracting
or
pushing
him at
every
turn toward
the isolated stretch of beach where Meursault
says
the sun made him kill
the Arab. When the
prosecuting attorney
hears
Raymond
Sintes
say
that it was
by
chance that Meursault was on the beach on that
Sunday,
he
says
that "le hasard avait
deja beaucoup
de mefaits sur la conscience
dans cette histoire." Like so
many
of the statements in
L'Etranger
this
one is ironic. The man who makes it
obviously
does not believe it. The
author, however,
intends it to be a true statement of fact. For in
sea,
sun,
and chance we have Camus'
equivalents
of the Greek notion of
doom.
Putting
it
baldly,
one can
say
that it is the irresistible attraction
of the sea which
brings
Meursault to the
beach,
where he meets Marie
Cardona,
and where under the
impact
of the sun's violent heat and
light
he murders the Arab. Thus the sea is
not,
as it would
appear
to
be, only
sensual
pleasure,
or a
symbol
of freedom or
rebirth,
but also an instru-
ment of death. The fact that Marie and Meursault
go
to the beach the
day
after the mother's burial is one of the items of evidence that leads
to the conviction. So the
Mother, Marie,
the
sea,
and the sun and the
various
symbols
of
authority
and
avenging justice join
forces to
produce
the murder of the Arab and the death sentence for Meursault. This is a
trap
as
neatly
laid as the one that
finally brings CEdipus
to the cross-
roads before his return to Thebes. The murder of the Arab is what Camus
calls a "meurtre de fatalite."2 XWhat
precedes
the
shooting
is natural
and
logical; why
it should terminate in murder remains a
mystery
that
Camus does not
try
to
explain, except by symbolic representations
of
unknowable forces.
Similarly
in the
(Edipus story: up
to the
meeting
at
the crossroads
everything
is understandable.
Why, however, (Edipus
should be there at the
precise
moment when Laius
goes by
is unfathom-
able.
The murder
episode
has
puzzled
and
annoyed many
readers:
they
12
"Un
esprit p6entr6
de
l'idee
de
l'absurde
admet le meurtre de
fatalite,
il ne saurait re-
cevoir A aucun titre le meurtre de raisonnement" ("Le Meurtre et
l'absurde," Emp6docle
[avril 1949], p. 22).
881
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
have either declared the act unmotivated or tried to find some rational
psychological
motive to
explain
it. The truth
may
be that we ask the
wrong question
when we
ask, "Why
did Meursault kill the Arab?" and
that it would be more worth while to
ask,
"What does the murder mean?"
Camus,
one of the most self-conscious and
intelligent
writers of our
times,
was
certainly
aware of the
mystery
that surrounds the murder.
He could
easily
have
chosen,
for
example,
to make Meursault kill in
obvious self-defense. But he did not.
Instead,
at the moment of the act
he blinded both hero and reader in an
explosion
of
metaphors. (After
using only
fifteen
metaphors
in
eighty-three pages
Camus uses
twenty-
five in four
pages.)13
It is a
hallucinatory
and
cataclysmic
event that
takes
place:
time
stops,
the world
shakes,
the
sky opens up
and rains
down fire. After
eighty pages
of
plain prose,
Camus
suddenly
resorts
to
poetry
because in the confrontation with death the hero encounters
what is for Camus the ultimate
mystery
of the universe.
If one
asks, "Why
did Meursault kill the Arab?"
only
one answer is
possible:
because of the
sun,
the answer
given by
Meursault. Chance
brought
him to the beach on that
particular day
and the sun made him
pull
the
trigger.
If one
asks,
"What does the murder mean?" then a
different order of answers can be
found,
in the context of the novel as a
whole as well as in the context of Camus'
thought
and works in
general.
In terms of the structure of the
book,
it means that the climax has been
reached; everything
that
precedes prepared
the
act,
and
everything
that follows is an
epilogue-a judgment (the
trial
episode)
and an
interpretation
of the act
(the
last
chapter).
The sudden transformation
of the
style
at the moment of the act is intended to
bring
the
intensity
of
the
episode
to maximum
pitch.
In terms of the
development
of the
hero,
it is the moment at which consciousness
begins.
The
experience
of death
is the
catastrophe
that illuminates the human condition. From this
point on,
Meursault is no
longer
a
purely
sentient consciousness. He
begins
to
understand,
to reflect. He no
longer feels;
he also knows.
"J'ai compris,"
he
says, "que j'avais
detruit
l'equilibre
du
jour. .";
comprendre,
in that
sense,
is an uncommon term in the first
part
of the
novel. Camus' use of the sun as the
symbol
of the ultimate vision of
truth in L'Ete makes it
probable
that here too the
sun,
with its terrible
brilliance,
is what
lights
the central
truth,
that
is,
death. Each of the
three
meetings
with death-the burial of the
mother,
the
murder,
and
the trial-takes
place
under the hottest sun of the
year. (In
the trial
episode
Camus
plays ironically
with the idea when he has the
prosecut-
ing attorney say
that Meursault's
guilt
will be
proved
under "l'aveu-
glante
clarte des faits d'abord et ensuite dans
l'eclairage
sombre" of his
13 W. M.
Frohock,
"Camus:
Image,
Influence and
Sensibility," YFS, lr, iv,
93-94. This
count was made in the unrevised edition of
L'Etranger.
882
Carl A.
Viggiani
criminal
mind.) Why
Meursault kills and
why
he dies remains a
mys-
tery, however, just
as for
Camus,
the universal and eternal murder of
men, i.e.,
the
reality
of
death,
is a
humiliating
and
incomprehensible
phenomenon.
In social
terms,
for
Camus, murder,
or
death,
is the door
through
which man enters
history.
Without death there would be no
human
history: "L'injustice,
la
fugacite,
la mort se manifestent dans
l'histoire. En les
repoussant,
on
repousse
l'histoire elle-meme"
(L'Homme
revolte, p. 357).
The same idea is
expressed
in the Lettres a un ami alle-
mand,
written
shortly
after
L'Etranger:
"Mais vous avez fait ce
qu'il
fallait
[the
Germans went to
war],
nous sommes entres dans l'Histoire"
(p. 80).
In other
words,
without death men would
simply
be
part
of an
eternal natural
order;
with death and the awareness of death human
history
and
tragedy begin.
This is the
paradigm
of Meursault's devel-
opment.
In
metaphysical
terms the murder is an
explosion
of revolt
against
the
very
forces that
bring
him to his
act,
and in
particular, against
the sun.
Everything
that Camus has said about
deicide,
the
implicit
identification of sun and
divinity
in his
works,
all the sun
symbolism
in
L'Etranger
and most of his other
works,
and the
imagery
of the murder
episode,
in which the
sun,
and not the
Arab,
is the
enemy, suggest
this
meaning.
It is further
suggested by
the fact
that, according
to the time-
table,
the act takes
place
on
Sunday,
the Lord's
day,
a
day
which-we
have been told before the murder-the murderer does not like. In this
respect,
the act is similar to one that Camus finds
particularly striking
in
Les Chants de
Maldoror,
in which Maldoror-a
revolte, according
to
Camus-attacks the Creator. On the realistic
level,
the act is
repeated
in
prison,
when Meursault assaults the
chaplain. Finally,
in the moral
terms of Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe,
the murder is the
logical consequence
of
what Camus calls a "mal de
l'esprit,"
the absurd
sensibility.
If all acts
are
equivalent
then murder is inevitable and an indifferent matter.
With the murder Meursault becomes a revolte. It is the fate of the
revolte to kill both God and
men.l4
According
to
Camus,
revolt in the
twentieth
century
has been
betrayed
and transformed into uncreative
nihilism; Stalinism, Fascism, Dadaism, Surrealism,
Formalism are some
of its
illegitimate progeny.
This
type
of
nihilism,
which issues in indis-
criminate
murder,
is incarnated on the social level in Camus' works
by
Nada, Caligula, Stepan,
and
Cottard,
whose final act is meant to be an
illustration of Breton's declaration that the
simplest
Surrealist act con-
sists in
going
down into the
street,
revolver in
hand,
and
firing
at random
into a crowd.15
(On
the artistic
level,
Camus
typifies
nihilistic formalism
14
"Tuer Dieu et batir une
eglise,
c'est le mouvement constant et contradictoire de la
revolte" (L'Homme
revolte, p. 131).
"II hait la
peine
de mort
parce qu'elle
est
l'image
de la
condition humaine
et,
en meme
temps,
il marche vers le crime"
(p. 83).
15
A.
Breton,
Les
Manifestes
du surrealisme
(Paris, 1946), p.
94.
883
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
in
Joseph Grand,
who is so obsessed with the formal
aspects
of com-
position
that he is unable to
complete
more than the first sentence of his
novel,
which he
finally burns.)
The true
rebel, however,
is
distinguished
from the nihilist
by
his
willingness
to
give
life for life.16 Ivan
Kaliayev
is the
key:
"Celui
qui accepte
de
mourir,
de
payer
une vie
par
une
vie, quelles
que
soient ses
negations,
affirme du meme
coup
une valeur
qui
le
depasse
lui-meme en tant
qu'individu historique
...
Kaliayev
et ses freres
triomphaient
du nihilisme."'7 Like
Kaliayev,
Meursault af-
firms this fundamental value
by accepting
from the start the
necessity
and
logic
of
paying
with his life:
"J'etais coupable, je payais,
on ne
pouvait
rien me demander de
plus" (p. 166).
To this value is added
another,
the
growing
and
finally
absolute
lucidity
of the hero.
The last two
parts
of
L'Etranger
act out the creation of these values.
There are two distinct
developments
in Part II: the first is in
Meursault,
who
begins
to examine himself and his relations with others at the same
time that the official
interrogation begins;
the second is the trial. Meur-
sault tells the
prosecuting attorney
at the
beginning
of the
interrogation
that he had lost the habit "of
questioning" himself,
that he never had
very
much to
say.
This is the Meursault of Part I. In Part II the cir-
cumstances
compel
him to examine
himself;
the
very thing
that
brings
him death forces him into the state of
lucidity
in which he awaits his
execution. And at one
point
in the
interrogation
he
says:
"II me semblait
que
je
n'avais
jamais
autant
parle" (p. 97),
which is
absolutely
accurate.
He
begins
to
reflect; reflichir,
a verb that
appears rarely
in Part
I,
turns
up
numerous times in Part II. He becomes interested in himself: "Meme
sur un banc
d'accuse,
il est
toujours
interessant d'entendre
parler
de
soi"
(p. 139).
He
begins
to attach some value to his
being
and
objects
when his
attorney
follows the tradition of
speaking
in the first
person
for the accused:
"Moi, j'ai pens6 que
c'etait m'ecarter encore de
l'affaire,
me reduire
a
zero
et,
en un certain
sens,
se substituer d moi"
(p. 147).
He
begins
to feel at home in his
prison cell, something
he could not do
in his
apartment.
He even feels that he could
easily
live in the trunk of
a tree. As time-called
"[le]
pire
ennemi" in Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe-
begins
to thin out in the structure of the
book,
he
literally
kills it in
prison by losing
his sense of time. With his
growing ability
to see
things
under the
aspect
of
eternity,
time
evaporates. Reflection, however,
is
accompanied by
the
development
of
feelings which, up
to the
murder,
Meursault had not
experienced.
He
says
of his
attorney: "J'aurais
voulu
le
retenir,
lui
expliquer que je
desirais sa
sympathie,
non
pour
6tre
mieux
d6fendu, mais,
si
je puis dire,
naturellement"
(p. 95).
He has
"nl
tue et meurt
pour qu'il
soit clair
que
le meurtre est
impossible"
(L'Homme
rvoltt,
p. 348).
17
Ibid., p.
216.
884
Carl A.
Viggiani
"une envie
stupide
de
pleurer"
because he knows how detested he is
by
court and
public (p. 127).
When Celeste has finished his ineffectual
testimony
Meursault
says
that it is the first time in his life that he has
wanted to embrace a man. He wishes to
explain
to the
prosecuting
attorney "cordially,
almost with affection" that he was
incapable
of
feeling regret (p. 143).
These are not
expressions
of
overpowering love,
certainly,
but
they
are as close as one
gets
to them in a book
consisting
in
great part
of ironic understatement.18
They
are the first
steps
toward
the
feeling
of the "tendre indifference du monde."
The trial itself is an ironic
recapitulation
of
everything
that
happens
in Part I. Like the burial and the
murder,
it takes
place
under a violent
sun that seems to seek him out: "Les d6bats se sont ouverts
avec,
au
dehors,
tout le
plein
du soleil"
(p. 117);
"le soleil s'infiltrait
par
endroits
et l'air etait
deja
etouffant"
(p. 118). Every insignificant thing, person,
and act of Part I returns with the sun and the mother's burial to con-
demn Meursault. The "Cela ne veut rien dire" theme of Part I is turned
upside
down:
everything
that
happened
to him becomes
supremely
meaningful:
the exact time of his mother's
burial,
the fact that he
smoked a
cigarette
and had a
cup
of coffee at his mother's
wake,
that
he saw a Fernandel
movie,
that he
agreed
to be
Raymond's pal, every-
thing
and
everyone
form
part
of the
trap
set for him. In the end Meur-
sault is
actually
convicted and sentenced to death for matricide and
parricide,
not homicide. Camus would
probably
admit that the trial
episode
is
derivative,
and that its
Kafkaesque quality
is not an accident.
The
crazy logic
of the
legal proceedings,
while more realistic
perhaps
than what
happens
in Kafka's
book,
nevertheless has similar overtones
of
meaning.
Like the
problems
of death and
time,
which
operate
in
Camus' works at several levels at
once, justice
is a theme that he deals
with in social and
metaphysical
terms. In
L'Etranger
the trial is a
par-
able of the universal and eternal sentence inflicted on men. It is the
supreme injustice
committed
against men, and,
like the
illogic
of the
trial
episode,
it is
incomprehensible.
The last
part
of the book is an
interpretation
of what has
preceded,
a
summing up
of the
knowledge gained.
It differs
radically
from what
has
preceded.
There is
practically
no
irony
in
it;
it is almost all
meditation;
even the
style goes through
a
partial
transformation.19 One new charac-
ter,
the
prison chaplain, appears.
Aside from
this, nothing happens.
Time has
stopped completely.
Meursault's
speculations
on death and
18
As Camus
says
in L'Homme rivoltd
(p.
375),
"la rEvolte ne
peut
se
passer
d'un
trange
amour"
(italics mine).
19
This should be the
subject
of another
paper.
It is incorrect to
speak
of the
style
of
L'Etranger.
Much of the
style
of what I have called Part m differs
substantially
from that
of Parts i-n.
885
Camus'
"L'Etranger"
the
meaning
of
life,
and his final
rejection
of
divinity
constitute the bulk
of the last
chapter.
Some of the
things
he has learned are
among
the
commonplaces
that Western
tragedy
has
exploited
since
they
were first
expressed
in Greek
tragedy.
There is no
way out,
there is no
escape
from
"la
mecanique,"
there is no "saut hors du rite
implacable."
We are all
condemned to
death,
and
yet
there is no more
important
event in a
man's life than death: "rien n'etait
plus important qu'une
execution
capitale
... "
(p.
155).
There is no God. Life has no transcendent mean-
ing,
and it is not worth
living,
but it is all that we
have;
the
only
worth-
while afterlife would be one in which life on earth could be remembered.
If these truths hold him and others
prisoner,
he in turn
possesses
them:
"Mais du
moins, je
tenais cette verite autant
qu'elle
me tenait." In this
paraphrase
of the Pascalian dictum the novel and the career of the hero
express
their final
meaning.
The mood of the last
page
is
tranquil. Having
discovered the link of
solidarity
with all men-death-Meursault
opens
up "pour
la
premiere
fois" to the tender indifference of the world: "De
l'eprouver
si
pareil
a
moi,
si fraternel
enfin, j'ai
senti
que j'avais
ete
heureux,
et
que je
l'etais encore"
(p. 171). Through
death he breaks
out of the "murs
absurdes,"
and is no
longer
a
stranger.
The
"je
l'etais
encore,"
as Camus would
put it,
echoes the "All is well" of Greek
tragedy. Murder, injustice,
condemnation to
death,
lucidity:
this is the
route of Camus'
tragic hero,
whose
career,
in its
understated, plebeian
way
is
patterned
after that of
tragic
heroes of
antiquity.
The fate of
Meursault is the universal condition of
men,
whose
history
is
precisely
death, injustice,
and their awareness of them.
The novel ends with what seems to be a
paradox. Having finally
ex-
perienced
the tender indifference of the world and discovered his bond
with
men,
that
is, having finally experienced love,
in his last sentence
the hero
expresses
the
hope
that crowds of
spectators
will witness his
execution and
greet
him with cries of hatred. This does not make sense
unless it is seen in the
light
of the
concept
of the homme-dieu that Camus
defines in Le
Mythe
de
Sisyphe. By
the end of the
novel,
Meursault is an
homme-dieu: to use Camus'
terms,
he has been
duped (the trial),
will be
"crucified"
(the guillotine),
he does not serve an immortal
being,
he has
denied
(killed) God,
and thus become God
himself,
he is
persuaded
of a
death without an
afterlife,
and thus he has realized the life eternal of
which the
Gospel speaks.20
His
death,
like Kirilov's
suicide,
will be a
pedagogical
act. "Kirilov doit donc se tuer
par
amour de l'humanite. II
doit montrer a ses freres une voie
royale
et difficile sur
laquelle
il sera
le
premier "(Le Mythe
de
Sisyphe, p. 147).
But this is also the role of
2O See the
chapter
on Kirilov in Le
Mythe de
Sisyphe.
886
Carl A.
Viggiani
another sacrificial
hero,
the Dieu-homme who dies for the love of men and
who, by
his
death,
shows them a new
path.
And it is Camus who reveals
the connection between the two
figures. Christ,
he
says,
is in a sense
(if
there is no
Paradise)
"celui
qui
a realise la condition la
plus
absurde.
I1
n'est
pas
le
Dieu-homme,
mais l'homme-dieu"
(p. 145). Essentially,
then,
his fate is like that of Meursault. And it is
only
this essential simi-
larity
that can
explain
the last words of
L'Etranger.
We are
invited,
in
other
words,
to recall the last moments of the
Christ,
whose crucifixion
was
preceded by
cries of hatred from the crowds. This is the consumma-
tion of the homme-dieu's
career,
Meursault's as well as Christ's.
Through
his
death,
Meursault
gains
and
exemplifies
a new vision of
life,
indeed
a new life. And either
consciously
or
unconsciously, Camus,
in the last
paragraph,
alludes to the notion of rebirth in death when he has Meur-
sault
say,
"Si
pres
de la
mort,
maman devait
s'y
sentir libere et
prete
a
tout revivre." This is
precisely
how Meursault feels. Thus Camus was
not
being
as
paradoxical
as he claimed when he wrote:
"I1
m'est arrive
de dire
aussi,
et
toujours paradoxalement,
que
j'avais essaye
de
figurer
dans mon
personnage
le seul Christ
que
nous meritions."21 Meursault
is a Christ
figure, just
as he is an
CEdipus
and
Sisyphus figure.
And this
brings
us back to the
starting point
of this
study,
the
relationship
of
time, theme,
and structure in the novel. For
part
of the historic mission
of Christ was
precisely
the transformation of time and death into
eternity
and a new life. It also
brings
us back to
names, characters,
and
symbols:
one
may
well
ask,
for
example,
whether the
predilection
for the name
Marie and names that echo
Marie,
whether the
centrality
of the
mother,
the ritualistic
bathing episodes,
the
concept
of the secular
saint,
are not
related to the Christ
figure.
In
short,
is it not Christ-an absurd
Christ,
it is true-and not
Sisyphus,
who is hidden behind the
developing
hero of Camus' fictions? But this is a
question
that can
only
be answered
by
Camus himself.
This
study
leaves unsaid
much, perhaps most,
of what can be said
about
L'Etranger,
and if it
suggests anything,
it is that Camus' slim
novel is a rich and
complex work,
whose
artistry
and
thought
we have
not
yet fully appreciated.
It is not
only
one of the most
significant
books
of our times in the ideas and
feelings
that it
incarnates,
but it is
also,
despite
its exterior
simplicity,
an intricate artistic
mechanism,
which
reveals more of its wealth of
meaning
and
complexity
each time it is
read.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
Middletown,
Conn.
21
L'Etranger (New York, 1955), Avant-Propos, p.
viii.
887

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