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The Guest | Introduction

Perhaps the best known and most popular of Camus’s short stories, ‘‘L’Hote’’ (‘‘The Guest’’) was published in 1957 in his first and only story collection, L’exil et le royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom). Exile and the Kingdom received a mixed reception from critics. Some saw the collection as revitalizing his career and laying the groundwork for future works after the writer had gone for several years without publishing. Others found that it did not live up to expectations. Many felt that there was an unresolved tension between the stories as fiction and as explorations of philosophical ideas. Evoking numerous and sometimes contradictory interpretations, ‘‘The Guest’’ has endured as one of Camus’s more important works, with recent critics delving more deeply into the colonial context of the story. It remains a compelling exploration of Camus’s moral and philosophical themes and a powerful evocation of colonial relationships. Camus worked on the story mainly from 1952 to 1954, revising it many times, most particularly as the crisis leading to the Algerian War deepened and he wanted to avoid worsening the tensions between French and Arab Algerians with his portrayals. Some of these modifications heightened the ambiguities in the story, particularly with respect to the character and motivations of the prisoner.

‘‘The Guest’’ tells of an encounter between a French Algerian schoolteacher and an Arab prisoner on the eve of the Algerian uprising. The story emphasizes many of Camus’s most characteristic themes: individual alienation, freedom, the value of human life, responsibility, the difficulty of moral choice, and the ambiguity of actions. It gains additional layers of meaning through its incisive portrait of colonial life and the psyches of colonizer and colonized alike.

The Guest Summary

‘‘The Guest’’ is a spare tale of Daru, a French Algerian schoolmaster, who is assigned against his will to deliver an Arab prisoner to the nearest city on the eve of the Algerian uprising. Daru was born in the rural area where the schoolhouse and the attached room in which he lives are located. His students come from poor villages nearby and have been suffering from a severe drought. To aid them, Daru has been distributing government-provided food rations. The story takes place just after an unseasonable snowstorm, when classes are suspended and the schoolmaster has spent the last three days alone. Daru first notices two men in the distance, one on horseback, one on foot, approaching the steep hill on which the schoolhouse is situated. Given the distance, the snow, and the rocky terrain, he knows it will take them a while to reach him.

When the two men are closer, Daru recognizes the horseman as Balducci, a policeman whom he knows. The other, with hands bound, being led by a rope, is marked by his clothing as an Arab. Daru brings them inside to get warm and makes tea for... » Complete The Guest Summary