The Guest | Albert Camus’s ‘The Guest’: A New Look at the Prisoner
In the following excerpt, Griem examines the
Arab’s character in Camus’s ‘‘The Guest,’’ and
contends that he is acting in accordance with his
own cultural norms and codes.
Interpretations of Albert Camus’s short story ‘‘The Guest’’ so far have had a tendency to make rather little of the prisoner, typically treating him as a primitive, brutalized, somewhat dull or even dimwitted character. In an influential early reading, Laurence Perrine helped establish this view, claiming that ‘‘his incomprehension . . . is emphasized’’ [Studies in Short Fiction, 1, 1963–64]. His comments in the Instructor’s Manual accompanying his widely used textbook Story and Structure [1988] reinforce the view: ‘‘From the beginning...
[The entire page is 1480 words long]
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