The Guest Novel summary and theme
Daru, a French schoolmaster born and raised in a remote,
sparsely populated desert region in the Atlas Mountains of French colonial
Algeria, glimpses a horseman and a pedestrian laboriously making their way
towards his hillside schoolhouse as they traverse the plateau that meets the
incline. In the distance, he makes out the horse’s strained breath in the
frigid air as the beast stumbles on uneven stones covered with “a layer of
dirty white snow” that has fallen during an unexpected October blizzard (65).
As Daru grabs a sweater from the schoolroom, he reflects on
the previous eight-month drought, which has decimated what few crops could be
cultivated in his region’s inhospitable soil and has killed off local
livestock, as well as humans. Just three days earlier, after the interminably
long stretch of blazing heat, the intense snowfall hit out of nowhere without
even a light rainfall to announce the transition from one extreme
meteorological event to another. Fortunately, the French administration
regularly drops off food rations, which he in turn distributes to local
families to keep them nourished.
His schoolroom, whose blackboard displays a drawing of
France’s four rivers, is devoid of students due to the blizzard. Despite the
simplicity of his lodging—the two-room structure houses both the school and his
living quarters—the region’s treacherous conditions, and his monastic
lifestyle, Daru feels “like a lord” compared to the impoverished, food insecure
families scattered around the area (66).
Returning to his window to track the men’s progress, Daru
makes out Balducci, an older Corsican police officer, on the horse, accompanied
by an Arab prisoner in traditional regional garb with his head lowered and
hands bound. When the men arrive, the schoolmaster welcomes them and prepares
tea, in following with local custom. Upon extending a cup of tea to the
prisoner, Daru displays discomfort at the Arab’s bound hands and requests
permission from Balducci to untie them. The silent prisoner’s feverish,
penetrating gaze fixes the schoolteacher’s eyes as the latter frees the Arab’s
hands so that he can cold the cup of tea.
Once his visitors are settled, Daru inquires as to their
destination; he appears perplexed when the gendarme indicates the schoolhouse.
The latter further explains that he’ll be leaving promptly and that the
schoolteacher is to escort the Arab to French authorities in Tinguit, the
nearest town. Initially convinced that Balducci is joking, Daru asserts that
transporting prisoners doesn’t fall into the purview of his job description.
Retorting that “[i]n wartime people do all kinds of jobs” (67), the gendarme
explains that, given the limited size of his staff, he must return to his post
without delay. As Balducci repeats his official order—“It’s an order, son, and
I repeat it” (69)—the schoolteacher bristles, emphatically refusing to
acquiesce. A tense debate ensues between the men.
Asked for details about the Arab’s crime, Balducci claims
that the man reportedly murdered his cousin during a squabble over grain, after
which he was hidden by his fellow villagers prior to being apprehended by the
police. The gendarme explains the urgency of the man’s transfer to Tinguit: His
village is astir and wants to reclaim him. Daru also asks if the Arab—who
doesn’t speak French—holds anti-French sentiment. The gendarme expresses doubt,
adding that one can never know for sure. Voicing his disgust at the prisoner’s
violent crime, Daru reiterates his refusal to adhere to orders, though he does
concede to house the prisoner for the night. After some hesitation, Balducci
decides that, rather than turn in Daru for insubordination, he’ll accept the
latter’s signing a form stating that he has completed his assigned task of
delivering the prisoner to the schoolhouse. At first, Daru resists signing the
document, but he eventually complies.
Prior to leaving, Balducci moves to retie the Arab but is met
with the schoolmaster’s resistance. Astonished at Daru’s resolve given that the
prisoner could pose a threat to his security, Balducci asks if Daru owns a
firearm, offering his revolver; unfazed, the schoolteacher replies that his
shotgun is buried somewhere in a trunk. Finally, the insulted Balducci leaves
in a huff.
With the gendarme gone, Daru orders the prisoner in Arabic to
wait in the schoolroom while he goes to nap in his room, grabbing the revolver
along the way. After resting, Daru hears nothing from the adjoining classroom
and feels a surge of pure joy at the prospect that perhaps the Arab has
escaped, thereby liberating him from having to decide the man’s fate. Alas, the
immobile prisoner has remained in the spot where Daru left him.
As evening approaches, Daru fashions a makeshift bed for the
Arab and begins supper preparations. The two men chat for the first time, with
the Arab asking what will happen to him and if Daru is his judge. Surprised
that Daru eats alongside him, the Arab confusedly answers a few simple
questions about his crime as the two men settle down for the night. Feeling
vulnerable and uncomfortable with the prisoner in his room, where he’s
accustomed to being alone, Daru has trouble falling asleep. During the night,
he hears the Arab stir as he makes his way outside. Again hoping that he’ll
escape, Daru is disappointed when he realizes that the prisoner has simply gone
outside to relieve himself.
In the morning, the rising sun begins to melt patches of snow
on the ground. The Arab washes as Daru prepares a package of food for the
journey. Initially refusing to budge, the man starts walking when the
schoolmaster joins him. Daru thinks he hears noise from around the schoolhouse
and briefly returns, not finding anybody. After two hours, the men come to a
crossroads, where Daru offers the Arab food and some money, indicating the
route to the police station in Tinguit towards the east as well as a southbound
path leading to an area inhabited by Berbers who will welcome him and offer
protection. Visibly agitated, the Arab attempts to speak but is silenced by
Daru, who bids the man farewell and heads back to the schoolhouse.
THE GUEST CHARACTER ANALYSIS
DARU
A short, husky Frenchman born and raised in a treacherously
rugged and dry rural area of French colonial Algeria, Daru is a schoolmaster
living alone in a rural hillside schoolhouse serving some 20 students.
Surrounded by abject poverty and living “almost like a monk” in his one
inelegant room attached to the classroom (66), the story’s protagonist
nevertheless feels privileged in this inhospitable land of his upbringing, this
place of belonging: “Everywhere else, he felt exiled” (66).
Ever compassionate, Daru regularly distributes food from
stocks provided by the administration to surrounding villagers left hungry
because of an eight-month drought. Similarly, Daru demonstrates kindheartedness
towards the Arab prisoner delivered to him, not only in refusing to keep him
bound by a rope—as the gendarme Balducci would have it—but also in preparing
food and drink that he consumes alongside him in a gesture of equality.
Resolute in his principles based on free will, Daru directly defies Balducci’s
orders to deliver the Arab—accused of murder—to authorities in a nearby town.
Though repulsed by the prisoner’s putative crime, he nonetheless offers the
latter a stash of food, money, and a path to freedom because “to hand him over
was contrary to honor” (72). Upon discovering that the Arab has rejected this
option, Daru, puzzled by the man’s lack of agency and anxious because of the
threat awaiting him on the chalkboard, feels vulnerable, despairing, and
isolated.
BALDUCCI
An older Corsican policeman with a bristling mustache, a
sun-bronzed forehead, and small dark eyes, Balducci exhibits consideration
towards the Arab prisoner he delivers to Daru, ensuring that his horse—upon
which he rides, while the Arab walks alongside, arms bound—doesn’t move so
quickly as to distress the man. Despite this small gesture of kindness,
Balducci carries out his orders, thus serving as a foil to Daru’s character.
Confronted with the schoolmaster’s emphatic refusal to
deliver the Arab to authorities in a nearby village, the gendarme fumes at his
longtime acquaintance—whom he qualifies as “a little cracked” and likens to his
son (68), repeatedly designating him as such—ultimately deciding not to turn in
the schoolmaster as long as he signs a form stating that Balducci has completed
his duty. Though he expresses distaste towards certain aspects of his job, this
gendarme smelling strongly of horse and leather nevertheless meticulously
adheres to established top-down procedures as they flow through the chain of
command.
THE ARAB
Unnamed throughout the story, the Arab prisoner, accused of
killing his cousin during an altercation over grain, remains unresponsive
during Balducci’s time with him despite the gendarme’s efforts to ensure his
relative comfort during their journey through the dirty fallen snow to Daru’s
schoolhouse. Struck by the Arab’s prominent “fat, smooth, almost Negroid” lips
(67), dark, feverish eyes, and obstinate forehead, Daru, jarred when the man
pulls down his hood and looks directly into his eyes, senses a rebellious
temperament residing under the faded blue jellaba cloaking him.
Speaking sparingly and only upon Balducci’s departure, the
Arab eventually grows attached to Daru—who, to his astonishment, cooks for and
eats with him—begging him to accompany him to the police station the following
day. When, during their expedition to Tinguit, Daru indicates two distinct
paths—one to the prisoner’s expected destination and the other to a region
inhabited by nomads who will take him in—the Arab, dumbfounded and irresolute,
remains immobile as Daru leaves him at the crossroads, ultimately choosing the
certainty of prison over the unknown.
THE GUEST THEMES
HUMAN ISOLATION IN AN INDIFFERENT UNIVERSE
From the story’s first paragraph onwards, isolation looms
large as Daru, a solitary, unwed teacher in a sparsely populated area of
Algeria, watches two men cross the snow-covered plateau that meets the hill on
which the schoolhouse doubling as his residence lies. Given the unexpected
onset of an unseasonal blizzard after eight months of brutal drought, Daru’s
students have been absent; as he makes note of the travelers’ progress from his
“empty, frigid classroom” (65), it becomes increasingly clear that, already
alone in the vast, harsh terrain of his birth, Daru hasn’t seen a soul in at
least a handful of days, when the last government food drop-off transpired.
The brutality of the terrain the protagonist calls home is
mirrored in the sky above; while the travelers’ visit has been accompanied by a
slight glimmer of light—a notable change from the darkness brought about by the
snowstorm—Daru knows that, in keeping with its customary pattern, the melting
snow will give way to scorching sun that will once again blaze the region’s
stone-covered fields, the unchanging sky shedding “its dry light on the
solitary expanse where nothing had any connection with man” (68).
The schoolmaster’s oxymoronic tête-à-tête with the
omnipresent silence enveloping his existence occurs after his having resolutely
defied Balducci’s order to deliver the prisoner to French authorities. Having
wounded his longtime father figure, Daru is left in a sterile, indifferent
realm, fully cognizant that: “No one in this desert, neither he nor his guest,
mattered. And yet, outside this desert neither of them […] could have really
lived” (70). His situation represents a classic example of the absurd, an
element of Camus’s philosophy.
Trapped in this vacuum, Camus’s protagonist must confront his
own moral code as it relates to the decision at hand—what to do with the Arab prisoner
left with him—as well as to his own status vis-à-vis the colonial government.
As a French citizen born in Algeria, Daru is the proverbial stranger in a
strange land; inhospitable as it is, this wretched landscape is his home, and
yet, imminent uprisings among indigenous Algerians suggest that French presence
in—and control of—the country will not last long. Daru’s ethical predicament
demands choice and action on his part.
FREE WILL, EXISTENTIALISM, AND THE ABSURD
Daru’s dilemma stems from Camus’s stance towards human
existence and individual responsibility. As a novelist, essayist, and
philosopher living in Paris during and after World War II, Camus became part
of—though later repudiated—the postwar existentialist cultural and
philosophical movement, which places utmost significance in the freedom at the
core of human existence. Deeming this individual freedom foundational in all
other values, existentialism addresses facets of modern life that humans face,
such as angst, boredom, isolation, nothingness, terror, and the absurd. With
each person forced to confront these components of life—itself intrinsically
absurd—the only option for the existentialist is to act at all costs.
In “The Guest,” all three characters must come to grips with
tough decisions and their consequences. When Balducci delivers the Arab to
Daru’s remote schoolhouse with orders that Daru house him for the night before
handing him over to French authorities, Daru is confronted with his conscience,
as well as with his role in society as a French citizen born in colonial
Algeria, where his people have ruled for over a century. French law would
dictate that he promptly transport the Arab to Tinguit, where “justice”—in the
form of prison—awaits him. Despite this command, the schoolmaster, albeit
thoroughly disgusted with the man’s purported crime, does not find it ethical
to comply with an order whose automatic outcome would be incarceration.
Instead, he would prefer that the Arab choose for himself, thereby exercising
his own free will. Meanwhile, Balducci, having been commanded from above to
leave the prisoner in Daru’s hands with orders that Daru take over the next
step of the mission, finds himself confronted with the latter’s outright
refusal to follow through beyond housing the Arab for the night. Upon
hesitation, rather than turn in Daru, the gendarme forces him to sign a form
certifying that he has delivered the Arab to the schoolhouse, thereby
certifying that his step of the process has been fulfilled. Similarly, the
prisoner, led by Daru to a crossroads and offered the freedom of electing one
of two paths—one to certain imprisonment in Tinguit and the other to shelter
among the region’s nomadic Berbers—chooses the road leading to apprehension by
the French legal system.
All three characters butt heads with the absurd. Living in a
hostile climate over which they have no control and among men “who didn’t help
matters either” (66)—namely each other, all of whose choices will determine the
Arab’s fate—they remain powerless in determining anything other than their own
choices, which they must make. Despite the futility of their reality, however,
they must choose and act, even with an indifferent sky looming above and
parched, infertile land below.
HOSPITALITY VIEWED WITHIN THE COLONIAL FRAMEWORK
Rooted in the Latin term hospitalitis—itself derived from the
word hospes, the word for “host” as well as “guest” or “stranger”—hospitality
denotes welcoming visitors known and unknown and typically involves offering
them food and shelter as well as anticipating their needs. As much today as in
ancient times, attending to itinerant visitors’ comfort and well-being also
implies providing them a safe temporary dwelling space with the potential
benefit of turning enemies into friends.
For as long as human interaction has been documented,
hospitality has figured as a salient element of society. Looking back as far as
15,000 BCE, Lascaux cave drawings in France display scenes of tribes hosting
each other. Within the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, Genesis 18’s tale of
Abraham and Sarah providing generous hospitality to three visitors exemplifies
this basic tenet of proper interpersonal conduct, which strengthens bonds among
individuals, communities, and nations.
Within the context of Camus’s “The Guest,” the hospitality
theme is announced by the story’s title, whose ambiguity stems from Latin
source word of the French word “hôte.” In its most evident sense, the story’s protagonist,
Daru, initially extends a warm welcome to both visitors—the gendarme, a
longtime acquaintance, and the unknown Arab prisoner—who have trudged through
harsh terrain and weather conditions to reach his schoolhouse. Although the
schoolteacher resents the gendarme for commanding him to deliver the prisoner
to French justice—which he refuses to do—as well as for forcing the latter’s
presence on him, he nevertheless accepts the Arab’s visit, fashioning
comfortable sleeping arrangements for his guest in his humble abode and
offering him a meal.
Contrary to local practice, Daru even eats alongside the Arab,
an act that the latter—a man of few words—remarks and questions. Daru’s simple
but declarative act of human solidarity brings to the fore an element of his
moral code, which, despite his superior status as part of the French colonial
power in the region, prohibits him from handing over the Arab to justice under
a legal system that’s not his own and, furthermore, that will consider him
guilty until proven innocent.
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