The Foreigner

the Foreigner is a novel of Albert Camus, published in 1942. It belongs to the “cycle of the absurdity”, trilogy made up of a novel ( the Foreigner ), of a test ( the Myth of Sisyphus ) and of a play ( Caligula ) describing the bases of philosophy camusienne: the Absurd . The novel was translated into forty languages and a film adaptation was carried out by Luchino Visconti in 1967.

Presentation

The novel puts in scene a narrator-character, Meursault, alive in Algeria at the time where this one is still French. The protagonist receives a telegram announcing to him that his/her mother has just died. He goes to the old people's home the Marengo one and attends with the beer setting and the funeral without testing emotion and taking the attitude of circumstance which one awaits from a endeuillé son.

Later, it meets Raymond Sintès (a neighbor of stage) who invites it to the beach. This last is upholder and was brutal with its Moorish mistress; it fears reprisals. On the beach, they cross two men of which one is the brother of the young Moorish. A brawl bursts. Little time afterwards, Meursault, overpowered by heat and the light, only goes on the beach and again meets one of the men close to a source of freshness. The Arab - who will remain anonymous - leaves his knife; Meursault tightens the revolver that Raymond left him. Moron by the heat and the aggressive luminosity of the afternoon, dazzled by the reflection of the sun on the knife, Meursault draws on several occasions, killing the Arab.

Imprisoned, it waits one year before being judged. During the lawsuit, one reproaches him especially his absence of emotions with died of his mother and his carefree life after mourning. It is included/understood whereas he is condemned to died not to be itself formed with manners of his company.

Analyzes and comments

the novel takes seat in the trilogy that Camus will name " cycle absurde". This trilogy also includes/understands the philosophical test entitled the Myth of Sisyphus and the play Caligula .

It is thus about a novel (Camus has one day written " If you want to be philosophical, write romans") whose main character, mysterious, does not conform to the guns of social morals, and seems foreign in the world and itself. Meursault is limited, in a narration close to that of the diary (analysis in less), to make an inventory of its acts, its desires and its trouble. It is representative of the absurd man painted in the Myth of Sisyphus , the absurdity incipient " of this confrontation enters the human call and the unreasonable silence of the monde".

The second part of the novel (which begins at once after the murder) sees however the narrator reappearing in the world and itself, as if death approaching had made him feel how much it had been happy. Meursault is more prolix there in the expression of its feelings and its revolt.

The writing of the novel, particularly neutral and white, makes the good share with last made up, whose Sartre will say that it " accentuate the loneliness of each unit phrastique". The style thus adds to the loneliness of this character vis-a-vis the world and to itself.

philosophical Point of view

Undoubtedly Camus, by this novel of the " cycle absurde" , on the romantic level the theory transposed of the Mythe of Sisyphus . It is at least the immediate reading which one can make of this account, that Sartre extremely well lit in Situations I . The ici-bas existence does not have a direction. The events are connected in a purely hazardous way, and it is a kind of fate which is drawn up in front of us. This is why Meursault is restricted to make an inventory of the events in a way cold, distant, as if those occurred independently of any volition. But Meursault remains a positive character, who puts up perfectly with this existence. Also cheating it not with the truth, in front of Marie or the court. Not that it expresses any thus pride: simply, it accepts the things such as they are and the interest does not see to lie to the others or itself.

By killing the Arab, Meursault thus does not answer a fatal instinct. All occurs as if it had been the toy of the sun and the light. In this direction, the relation of the murder takes a quasi mythical dimension, the more so as this sun and this light are omnipresent in the novel, and act even concretely on the acts of the narrator-character.

The second part of the novel sees a Meursault imprisoned, contemplating its condemned man, and obliged to reflect on its life and its direction. Are born the revolt then in front of the injustice, the revolt against a death which occurs too early, and the reconciliation with the world and oneself. If one rather clearly perceives the loathing of Camus vis-a-vis the injustice and the capital punishment, one also notes who Meursault becomes the revolted man that the author will evoke later. " The opposite of committed suicide, written Camus in the Myth of Sisyphus , it is condemned to mort" (COp cit., p. 79): because committed suicide gives up, whereas condemned revolts. However, the revolt is the only possible position for the man of the absurdity: " I thus draw from the absurdity three conclusions which are my revolt, my freedom and my passion. By the only play of the conscience, I transform into rule of life what was invitation with died - and I refuse the suicide." writing still Camus in its test (COp cit., pp. 90-91).

It does not remain about it less than the Foreigner still raises many questions to which it is quite difficult to answer. " The philosopher's stones are recognized so that they overflow all the comments which they cause. It is thus only that they can fill us: by always leaving, behind each door, another open door. (Bernard Pingaud, the Foreigner, of Albert Camus , COp cit., p. 137)

However, we speak well here about a fiction and not about a test; indeed Camus acknowledges itself to have written the Foreigner with an aim of distracting: its novel is registered with a ludic, and not philosophical aim. However it is difficult not to make a bringing together between this fiction and the Existentialisme.

Albert Camus is explained in a last interview:

I summarized the Foreigner, a long time ago, by a sentence of which I recognize that it is very paradoxical: “In our company any man who does not cry with the burial of his mother is likely to be condemned to death.” I wanted to say only that the hero of the book is condemned because he does not play the game. In this direction, it is foreign at the company or it saw, it wanders, in margin, in the suburbs of the private life, recluse, sensual. And this is why readers were tempted to regard it as a wreck. Meursault does not play the game. The answer is simple: he refuses to lie. … One would thus not be mistaken much by reading in the Foreigner the history in a man who, without any heroic attitude, agrees to die for the truth. Meursault for me is thus not a wreck, but a man poor and naked, in love with the sun which does not leave shades. Far it is private of any sensitivity, a major passion, because tenance animates it, the passion of the absolute and the truth. It sometimes happened to me to say as, and always paradoxically, as I had tried to appear in my character only the Christ whom we deserve. One will understand, after my explanations, that I said it without any intention of blasphemy and only with a little ironic affection that an artist has the right to test with regard to the characters of his creation

Prolongations

The film adaptation by Luchino Visconti: of alive sound, Albert Camus always refused to see carrying the screen Abroad . After her death, its widow contacts the producer Dino De Laurentiis, requiring to choose itself the scenario writer and the realizer. Its choice stops finally on Luchino Visconti, after Mauro Bolognini, Joseph Losey and Richard Brooks was had a presentiment of for the setting in scene; Marcello Mastroianni, free following the adjournment of the turning of It viaggio di mastorna of Federico Fellini, incarnates Meursault, whereas Jean-Paul Belmondo, then Alain Delon, had been initially selected. Mastroianni finances itself part of film.

the Foreigner also inspired in 1980 with Robert Smith, the leader and singer of the Cure, a song entitled Killing year Arab .

See too

Sources

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