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Modern Language Association

Camus' L'EtrangerAuthor(s): Carl A. ViggianiSource: PMLA, Vol. 71, No. 5 (Dec., 1956), pp. 865-887Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/460515Accessed: 04/04/2010 23:16

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PMLAPUBLICATIONS OFTHE-MODERN-LANGUAGE-ASSOCIATION-OF-AMERICA

Issued Five Times a Tear.VOLUMEXXI D)ECEMBER1956 NUrMBE 5OLUMEXXI DECEMBER956 NUMBER

CAMUS' L'ETRANGERBY CARLA. VIGGIANI

M OST of the critical writing on L'Etrangerhas been focused on theworld view or philosophy that it expresses. This is certainlylegitimate, especially since Camus himself sees the novel as an incarna-tion of "a drama of the intelligence."' As a result, however, some of theformal and imaginative aspects of L'Etrangerhave been neglected, withthe further result that the full meaning of the novel has remained hidden.On the surface, L'Etranger gives the appearance of being an extremelysimple though carefully planned and written book. In reality, it is adense and rich creation, full of undiscovered meanings and formalqualities. It would take a book at least the length of the novel to make acomplete analysis of meaning and form, and the correspondences ofmeaning and form, in L'Etranger.My purpose here is less ambitious. Ishould like first to take up aspects of the novel that have not yetbeen 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 willbe 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 whatmay appear to be digressionswill be justified by the light they throw onthe novel.Camus formally divided L'Etranger into two parts, the first endingwith the shooting of the Arab, and the second with Meursault's tiradeagainst the prison chaplain. Underlying the formal division, there is a

1Le Mythede Sisyphe (Paris, 1942), p. 134. The editions of Camus' other works referredto in this article, all published in Paris, by Gallimard, are the following: Noces (1950);L'Etranger1953);Letfres un ami allemand1948);Le Malentendu, aligula 1944);LaPeste (1947); L'Etat deSiege (1948); L'Hommervoltd (1951); L'Etd(1954).865


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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 onlyby the nature of the events and the development of the hero in eachpart, 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 inwhat seems to be an export-import firm located in Algiers. We are givenno positive information about his age; he is a young man, and like mostof Camus' heroes, he is probably around thirty. In Part I, the events arenarrated 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 periodof a little over eleven months, and the whole period is narrated retro-spectively. No time references are given in Part III: the narrator talksof 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 frameworkthat finally disappears, in L'Etranger it is part of the essence of thechronicler'sstory.

The events of L'Etrangerare few in number and easy to recall. Theprincipal ones are repeated here for reference purposes and in order tomake the time-structure-theme relationship clearer. The sequence ofevents is as follows:PART

CHAP. iFirstday: Thursday.News ofmother'sdeath.Arrivalat Marengo.Thewake.Secondday:Friday.The funeralprocession ndburial.

CHAP. iiThirdday:Saturday.Meursault'smeetingwith Marieat beach.Theyspendnight together.Fourthday: Sunday.Marie has left. Meursault pendsa restlessday.CHAP. ii

Fifth day:Monday.Meursaultagreesto helpSintespunishsweetheart.CHAP.v

Eleventh ay:Sunday.Day at the beach with Marie.CHAP.V?thday: weekday uring hirdweek.MeursaultacceptsRaymond'snvitationto spendfollowingSundayat friend'sbeachhouse.Agrees o marryMarie.CHAP. vi

Eighteenthay.Sunday.The murder.

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CarlA. ViggianiPART I

CHAP. iNo precise imegiven.Meursault s interrogatedby prosecuting ttorney.

CHAP. iiNo preciseimegiven.Meursault elatesprisonexperiences ndmeditations,Marie'svisit. (Elevenmonthshave elapsedsincemurder.)

CHAP.iiFirstdayof trial. (June,a yearaftermurder.)Witnessesheard.

CHAP.vSeconddayoftrial. Meursault entenced o death afterfinalspeechesof attorneys.

PART IIICHAP. V

No precisetime given:sometimeaftertrial. Meursault's meditations on deathandpossibilityofescape.Thechaplain'svisit.In all of Part i the time references are numerous and precise. Theopening 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"; "Enprincipe, l'enterrement est fixe a dix heures du matin." "Le soir etaittombe brusquement." Even when it is given indirectly, the time isprecise: "J'ai pense aux collegues du bureau. A cette heure, ils se levaientpour 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 leastone place he trips himself up: in narrating the events of the eleventhday (the second Sunday), he begins with "Ce matin" and the next tothe last sentence in the chapter reads: "Mais il fallait que je me levet6t 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 Augusttogether at the beach and sharing expenses. Either the events are takingplace during that month and the men are making plans for the followingyear, or they are taking place in June or July. What is important, inany case, is that what happens takes place during the summer. Theshooting 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 elevenmonths ("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

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Camus' "L'Etranger"trial. In the whole of Part II the precise day by day account gives wayto a rapid flow of time whose events are narrated by a character forwhom time is rapidly becoming meaningless. Occasionally, precise timereferences are made ("A sept heures et demie du matin, on est venume chercher"), but no day is ever given. All this takes place duringthe fall, winter, and spring months. The trial begins with the summerheat, during the latter part of June.In Part II the significance of time, implicit in the whole of the firstpart, becomes explicit. For example, the time of the mother's death,which the narrator, in his opening paragraph, said was a matter of noimportance, becomes crucial at the trial. One of the most damagingpieces of evidence against Meursault at the trial is that he began hisliaison with Marie "le lendemain" of his mother's funeral. This is partof the ironic recapitulation of his career during the trial, of which morewill be said below. More important, for the moment, is the fact thatMeursault himself begins to talk about time, at first ironically butfinally 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 repeatsthe phrase: "Toute la question, encore une fois, etait de tuer le temps."And again on the following page: "Il me restait alors six heures atuer." We realize, as we encounter the expression the third time, thatlike so many of the characters, images and statements in Part I ("Celane 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 inand by the hero's experience. Soon after the third ironic restatement ofthe theme it appears undisguised: "J'avais bien lu qu'on finissait parperdre la notion du temps en prison. Mais cela n'avait pas beaucoup desens pour moi. Je n'avais pas compris a quel point les jours pouvaientetre a la fois longs et courts . . . tellement distendus qu'il finissaient pardeborder les uns sur les autres.... Pour moi, c'etait sans cesse lememe jour qui deferlait dans ma cellule" (pp. 114-115). That time hasspun practically to a standstill is indicated by the opening sentence ocChapter iii of Part II: "Je peux dire qu'au fond l'6te a tres vite remplacel'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 replacedby symbols of eternal return and permanence: day and night, sky, andstars. Whereas the first paragraphs of chapters in Part i contained time

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CarlA. Viggianireferences, the first paragraph of the last chapter speaks of the sky andthe recurrence of day and night: "De celle-ci [his cell], lorsque je suisallonge, je vois le ciel et je ne vois que lui. Toutes mes journ6es sepassent a regarder sur son visage le declin des couleurs qui conduit lejour a la nuit" (p. 152). As he meditates, he contemplates the sky: "Jem'etendais, je regardais le ciel, je m'efforgaisde 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 des6toiles 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-flowin which the development takes place move along together from theparticular to the most general and universal: In Part I, a chapter foreach major event, six chapters for the account of eighteen days, a de-tailed, if laconic, narration of even trivial incidents, parts of each daycarefully specified; in Part ii, four chapters for the narrationof the eventsof about a year; in Part II, one chapter in which time has vanished andin which virtually nothing happens. The development of the structure isparalleled by the metamorphosis of the hero from a purely sentientconsciousness into a man who begins to reflect upon himself and hisrelations with men in the second part of the novel, and who finallytranscends the self and society in speculations concerning the ultimatemeaning of life and death. That time, then, informs and is an integralpart of both structure and theme in the novel is clear. The precise rolethat the concept of time plays in the development of L'Etrangerwill bediscussed when we take up the theme, in the concluding portion of thisstudy.The point of view in L'Etrangeris only slightly different from that inLa Peste. In both, the events are narrated by the principals: Meursaultin L'Etranger, Rieux and Tarrou in La Peste. The difference lies prin-cipally in the greater objectivity of Rieux's account, for Tarrou's journalis as personal as Meursault's. Camus' seeming predilection for thisnarrative device is revealing. Despite his fundamentally romantic na-ture, Camushas tried to become, and to a certain extent he has succeededin becoming "un ecrivain objectif."2His first works, however, gave himaway. L'Envers et L'Endroit and Noces are autobiography. There isabundant evidence that the rest of his works are equally autobio-graphical, that his heroes are fictional projections of his own developingself. Gradually, however, Camus has drawn further away from hisfictions. In La Peste, for example, the hero is a composite of several char-

2 "J'appelle bjectifunauteurquise proposedessujetssansjamaisse prendreui-memecomme ujet" (L'Et, p. 132).

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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 farmore "objective" than Caligula. L'Etranger, however, is midwaybetween 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 amongthem, 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 theSisyphus myth. The irony arises out of the transformation of the hero-antagonist of the gods into an office clerk who spends his days workingon bills of lading and the rest of his time in a variety of dull and sordidadventures. The eternal punishment of Sisyphus is expressed in a con-temporary image of absurdity: the deadening routine of the life of anoffice worker. As Camus puts it in Le Mythe de Sisyphe: "Lever, tram-way, quatre heures de bureau ou d'usine, repas, tramway, quatre heuresde travail, repas, sommeil et lundi mardi mercredi jeudi vendredi etsamedi sur le meme rythme ... " (p. 27). This is not the whole image;to it is added the final awareness of the mortality and meaninglessnessof life, and the immortality and senselessness of death. What interestsCamus most in the Sisyphus myth is the moment when Sisyphus reachesthe top of the hill and watches his stone roll down. That moment, saysCamus, is "celle de la conscience." In his awareness of his eternallyfutile task Sisyphus is superior to his destiny and stronger than hisstone. What makes the myth tragic is the condemned man's awareness(p. 165). The counterpart of this in L'Etranger is the last chapter, inwhich 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 sacrificialGod-man, or, as Camus prefers to put it, the man-god. That Camushad 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 theyand Sisyphus are represented as prototypes of the absurd hero. TheCEdipusmyth is reflected in the complicated trap set for Meursault bychance, the sea, and the sun, and in his final attitude of reconciliation.The man-god figure appears to have been suggested to Camus by (orassociated in his mind with) the careers of Christ and of Dostoevski'sKirilov, the first, a symbol of divine self-sacrifice,the second, a sacrificialhero who rejects God, thereby becoming himself God, and who affirms

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Carl A. Viggiani 871his liberty and his love of humanity by what Camus calls a "pedagogicalsuicide."3It can be argued that these archetypes are found in hundredsof works since antiquity and that their reappearance in Camus' novelis not particularly significant. The answer to this objection is the novelitself and Le Mythe de Sisyphe, where the author's preoccupation withthem is explicit and clear. His use of myth is not unlike that of Joyceand Eliot, that is, deliberately ironic and intended to bring together inthe reader's mind the mythical figure and the contemporary hero; andlike Eliot, Camus provides his reader with a commentary that revealsthe connection.This central ironic device has its counterparts in the names of thecharacters in the novel, which are for the most part multivalent. ForCamus, the naming of characters seems to be both a conscious and anunconscious way of adding dimensions of meaning to the worldhe 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; commonnouns that indicate profession, trade, family relationshipor the like, suchas the juge d'instruction, the aumonier,and La Mere in Le Malentendu;proper names, some of which Camus may have invented, but most ofwhich can be found in a dictionary of names. Many of the latter seem tohave some special meaning for the author. In what follows I should liketo suggest some of the possible meanings and uses of the names borneby Camus' characters. Obviously, what will be said can only be tentativeand inconclusive; I avoid all the necessary qualifications only for thesake of brevity.The first category of names needs no comment. The second two cate-3A few quotations from the chapters on Kirilov and Sisyphus will make clear the linksthat connect Meursault with these figures: "En ce sens seulement, Jesus incarne bien toutle 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 peutetre crucifie et dupe-l'est dans une certaine mesure" (p. 146). "On apergoit desormais lesens de la premisse kirilovienne: 'Si Dieu n'existe pas, je suis dieu.' Devenir dieu, c'estseulement etre libre sur cette terre, ne pas servir un etre immortel . . . Kirilov se sacrifiedonc. Mais s'il est crucifie, il ne sera pas dupe. I1 reste homme-dieu, persuade d'une mortsans 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 versson 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. CEdipeobeit d'abord au destin sans le savoir. A partir du moment oil il sait, satragedie commence. Mais dans le meme instant, aveugle et desesper6, il reconnalt que leseul lien qui le rattache au monde, c'est la main fraiche d'une jeune fille. Une paroledemesuree retentit alors: 'Malgre tant d'epreuves, mon Ageavanc6 et la grandeur de monAmeme font juger que tout est bien.' L'CEdipede Sophocle, comme le Kirilov de Dostoev-sky, donne ainsi la formule de la victoire absurde. La sagesse antique rejoint l'heroismemoderne" (pp. 166-167).


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Camus' "L'Etranger"gories reflect the allegorizing tendency of Camus' imagination; in thethird category the characters designated are not only realistic charactersbut types as well. The largest and most important category of names isthe last, most of which are traditional. The following are among the prin-cipal men's and women's given names and surnames in Camus' novelsand plays (with the exception of Caligula): Meursault, Salamano, Mas-son, Othon, Thomas Perez, Le Juge Casado, Raymond Sintes, RaymondRambert, BernardRieux, Joseph Grand, Cottard, Castel, Pere Paneloux,Emmanuel, Celeste, Jean Tarrou, Jan, Ivan Kaliayev (called Yanek inLes Justes), Diego; Marie Cardona, Maria, Martha, Victoria, Jeanne.A number of patterns and correspondencescan be noted. First of all,a predilection for certain names: Jean, its non-French equivalents, Jan,Ivan (Yanek), and its feminine counterpart, Jeanne4;Raymond (Sintesand Rambert); Thomas and its derivative, Masson; Marie (Cardona)and Maria. Second: certain names are intended to communicate anidea, 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 Germanicring; Le Juge Casado means 'the married judge'; Joseph Grand is ofcourse the very opposite of great, and there is nothing very heavenlyabout 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 (OFand It. 'castle,' 'fort') is another healer, or secular saint, whose namesuggests the virtue of a man who develops a serum against the plaguebacillus. Third: Camus seems to be intent on using names that have apeculiarly New Testament character or that are in some way importantin the Christian tradition: Marie, Martha, Jean, Thomas, Diego, Joseph,Emmanuel (Manuel in Noces) are all New Testament personages of thefirst importance, as all but one are in Camus' works; Victoria denotes avirtue traditionally associated with Mary, the mater gloriosa, and inChristian art Mary is frequently represented as the "Santa Maria dellaVittoria"; 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 thename of the principal secular saint. Fourth: the names Le Vieux andRieux seem to be slight phonetic deformations of dieu. In Le MalentenduLe Vieux, described as "sans Age," is a grotesque surrogate of God, as

4Jean s the nameof oneof Camus' hildren.The nameof theheroof La Chute,Camus'latestbook, s Jean-BaptisteClamence.t mightbe added hat,accordingo Camus, vanKaramazovbegins"l'entreprisessentiellede la revolte,quiest de substituerau royaumede la graceceluide la justice"(L'Hommevoltt, p. 77).

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Carl A. Viggianithe last scene of the play makes abundantly clear. That Rieux is alsoa disguised form of dieu is perhaps more conjectural; evidence for theassertion lies mainly in Camus' preoccupation with the figure of thehomme-dieu,manifested in most of his works, in the fact that in La PesteRieux plays the role of an homme-dieu,and lastly, in Camus' constantname-punning and allegorizing, as in the name Le Vieux. Fifth: if onecan assume that Camus' dramatic and novelistic heroes are fictionalprojections of his own developing self, and that in La Peste those whofight 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 existentialleap but who is an extension of Camus' ideal of the sacrificial saint) arenames that echo (with slight distortion) the phonemes of the nameAlbert Camus.From what has been said it becomes clear that in the names thatCamus 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 thename of its hero. Because of the suggestivity of the name, it has excitedthe interest and curiosity of more than one reader.However, in discussingthis study with me, M. Camus said that he found the name at dinner oneevening when a bottle of Meursault wine was served. He added that, de-spite the suggestivity of the name, he did not consciously associate itwith any particular idea or feeling. He did say, however, that Salamanowas 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 andspots, who resembles his dog, and who has "[des] mains crouteuses" (p.61). The idea of 'dirty hands' that the Italianate name evokes reinforcesthe feeling of disgust produced by both man and dog.

The names of three more characters in L'Etrangerrequire some com-ment: Thomas Perez, la mere (maman), and Marie. As we shall see, themother, the absent or dead father who appears in a variety of disguises,and the son constitute the matrix of Camus' fictional world. The othercharacters 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 centralfigures of the mother and the father. In this light, Thomas Perez, thename of Meursault's mother's "fiance," becomes more than a commonFranco-Spanish name. If one disregardsthe z of the surname, it becomesthe French word for 'father,' which on one level is precisely the roleplayed by the character. In la merewe have one of the two or three keywords in Camus' vocabulary. There is a great deal of internal evidencein Camus' works that suggests the identification on an unconscious level

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Camus' "L'Etranger"of mother and sea, of la mere and la mer, which are as omnipresent inhis works as the sun and father figures, and as intimately involved inthe hero's fate. It is perhaps only coincidence that the names of thesister, mistress, and wife in Le Malentendu and L'Etranger are namedMartha, Maria, Marie, all of which suggest mereand mer, and that theold people's home in L'Etrangeris located at Marengo (an actual placename), and that they also give a slightly distorted echo of part of thehero's name, and Camus' obsessive theme, la mort.But it is the kind ofcoincidence that is profoundly revealing, and particularly for an under-standing of L'Etranger."Etre classique," said Camus, "c'est en meme temps se repeter etsavoir se repeter." His dictum applies not only to the way in which henames many of his characters but also to the types of characters andbasic situations in his novels and plays. In L'Etranger, Meursault, themain character, murders and is condemned to death; and in some way,all of Camus' heroes and heroines suffer or watch others suffer a similarfate. Caligula commits wholesale murders and sexual crimes and isassassinated. La Mere and Martha drown Jan and then commit suicide.Yanek assassinates the Grand Duke and is condemned to death. Diegostruggles against La Secretaire and La Peste but dies after gaining amomentary victory. The heroes of La Peste either suffer death them-selves, or they witness the death of loved ones, or they fight against auniversal death sentence, the plague. The obsessive image of the con-demned man (or woman) dominates even Camus' short essays andphilosophical treatises. Noces, for example, which is informed by a pas-sion for life, has as its epigraph a quotation from Stendhal that refers toan execution, and the idea of death regularlybreaks into this orgy of life.The opening sentence of Le Mythe de Sisyphe declares that there is onlyone 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 ofhomicide and suicide. In the works that followed Caligula, however, andbeginning with L'Etranger, the role played by the main character orcharacters is that of the sacrificial hero who suffers death for the loveof others, that they may live or live better in some way. Diego, Rieux,Tarrou, Rambert, Grand, and Castel are literally healers who sacrificethemselves in a fight against death. Yanek gives his life so that hiscompatriots will have a chance for a better life. This development be-gins, as it will be seen, with the opening of Meursault to the "tendreindifference du monde."The other principals of L'Etrangerare the mother, the deceased father,

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Carl A. ViggianiMarie, and the sea and the sun. This can be put in a more revealing,though awkward, way, by saying that the other principals are themother-sea-Marie and father-sun-judge-prosecuting attorney figures.One need have no psychoanalytical bias to recognize the identity of thethree female forms. The names of two of them are homonyms, and thethird name not only resembles the first two phonetically but is the nameof the type of the mother, who has traditionally been associated with thesea, But Camus' other works are themselves the best proof of theoneness of the three. The figure of the mother appears in some form inall of Camus' creative works, even if only in a passing reference, as inNoces. In Le Malentendu she murders the son by drowning him; inL'Etrangershe is ultimately responsible for the son's death; she replacesthe dying wife in La Peste; she is the long-suffering mother of Victoriain L'Etat de Siege; in Les Justes she appears as the wife of the GrandDuke, whom Ivan has blown up. Only for Caligula is it necessary toinvoke the benevolent shade of Freud to find the mother, this time in thefigure of Drusilla, Caligula's sister, with whom he has had incestuousrelations, and whose death sends him into a homicidal frenzy. The figureof the young sweetheart-wife-sister is also omnipresent, and plays asimportant a role in the recurringdeath ritual as the mother, either suf-fering death or its consequences, as in La Peste and Le Malentendu, ordeliberately or otherwise bringing the hero closer to death, as in L'Etran-ger where the bathing and movie episodes help seal Meursault's fate, andin 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 sheis intimately associated with the mother, consciously in the first play,where she shares with her the role of murderess, and unconsciously inCaligula, in which she is the object of incestuous desires.The last of the trinity of characters that dominate Camus' works isthe usually deceased father and the many figures who appear in hisstead. The fathers of Meursault and Tarrou are both dead but theyremain (because they are associated with capital punishment) to haunttheir sons' memories and influence their careers. In L'Etat de Siege, LeJuge Casado, 'the married judge,' is one of Diego's antagonists, and heinsists on turning Diego out of the house and denouncing him as abearer of the plague. Elsewhere the father takes the various shapes ofthe symbol of authority, principally as a judge or prosecuting attorney(L'Etrangerand La Peste), as police officers (L'Etranger,Les Justes, andLa Peste, where, like Meursault, Rieux dislikes the police), or as priests(L'Etranger, La Peste). These characters either condemn the hero todeath, or are explicitly associated in the hero's mind with the death

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Carl A. Viggianito character, novel, and creator when he makes him say that "tousles Etres sains avaient plus ou moins souhait6 la mort de ceux qu'ilsaimaient" (p. 94). It is part of the ironic joke in L'Etrangerthat Meur-sault is convicted not only for matricide but also for parricide. Onelast point in this connection: Camus' heroes go to their deaths withalmost absolute willingness, and even a certain obstinacy; when theystruggle innocently against death, as in the case of Rieux, Tarrou, andDiego, it is with the knowledge that they are sacrificing themselves.They give life for life. We recall that this, according to Camus, is thecondition of remaining faithful to the idea of revolt. Thus, out of anessentially (Edipal impulse arises not only the center of Camus' fictionalworld, but one of the most creative concepts of our times, the idea ofrevolt outlined in L'Homme revolte.A link between this psychological impulse and the fictional world andworld view of Camus is to be found in his use of two ancient mythicreligious symbols, the sea and the sun, which are clearly associated inhis 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 tostate the main features of Camus' use of these symbols. As he says, theycome naturally to a writer raised on the shores of North Africa. InCamus' essays "allusions to the sun constantly evoke a tonality ofviolence" (this has to be qualified); "the sea features... as the con-stant solace.... "6 John examines briefly the role of the symbols inL'Etranger,La Peste, Le Malentendu,and L'Etat de Siege, and he pointsout one of the symbolic overtones of the bathing episodes-the longingfor freedom. John's study leaves only one thing unsaid, the nature of therelation of these two symbols to characterpatterns in Camus' works, andto the mythic and religious tradition out of which these symbols arise.It hardly needs to be said that sea and sun are religious symbols ofgreat 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 healedand reborn. Through immersion in water everything is dissolved, allforms disintegrate, all history is abolished; nothing subsists from whathad existed before immersion. It is the equivalent of death on the humanlevel, and of catastrophic events (the deluge) on the cosmic level. Hewho is immersed in water arises free of sin, without history, worthy ofreceiving a new revelation and of beginning a new life. While the sundoes not enjoy the same prestige and antiquity in religious myths aswater and sea, it is nonetheless an important and recurrent symbol in

6FS, ix (Jan.1955),42-53.

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Camus' "L'Etranger"most of them. It is the male principle, guaranteeing fecundity. It is alsoa symbol of God and true knowledge. It is assigned both destructive andfecundating 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 causedeath.7This is not meant to imply that Camus' use of sun and sea symbolismstems from an a priori knowledge of their ancient religious history. Onthe contrary, Camus employs these symbols in a simple, natural, some-times almost primitive way. Furthermore the feelings inspired by thesephenomena, and the psychological and dramatic functions of the sym-bols in Camus' works closely parallel those associated with them inreligious myths from their very beginnings. In Noces, sea, sun, earth,wind are all personified by Camus; through the richness of the sensualexcitation 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 earthand sea feel for each other (p. 18). He belongs to a race born of the sunand the sea (p. 26). This sexual union is paralleled by that of sun andearth and of man and earth (p. 64). For the author of Noces, PlotinianUnity is expressed in terms of sun and sea (p. 61). In general, cosmicphenomena inspire him with sensations of love, fertility, youth, inshort, with the glory of natural life.In Le Malentendu,Martha's nostalgia for a land close to the sea andunder the sun causes Jan's death-by drowning. (This is the only clearinstance of the mortal effect of water in Camus' works, but it is essentialfor a complete understanding of its role in L'Etranger.) In La Peste theplague hits Oranunder the hot sun of spring and summer and the beachesare inaccessible to the quarantined Oranais.As autumn and winter come,the plague spends itself under "un soleil sans force" (p. 335). It is atprecisely 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 nottrue of L'Etat de Siege, in which the sea is represented as the mother andsignifies freedom; the comet (a sun symbol) is a sign of the plague, and thewind from the sea brings final liberation from it. There is no cosmicsymbolism 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 estgrand, chaque ceuvre l'en rapproche, ou, du moins, gravite encore pluspres de ce centre, soleil enfoui, oiutout doit venir bruler un jour" (p. 138).

TM. Eliade, Traite d'histoire des religions (Paris, 1948).

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Carl A. ViggianiMany of the sea themes of Noces are repeated and developed: "Lariviere et le fleuve passent, la mer passe et demeure. C'est ainsi qu'ilfaudrait aimer, fidele et fugitif. J'epouse la mer" (p. 174). "Grande mer,toujours labouree, toujours vierge, ma religion avec la nuit! Elle nouslave et nous rassassie dans ses sillons steriles, elle nous libere et noustient 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 thefather: it weds sea and earth, it is the image of truth, it overpowers anddestroys. Together, they are symbolic representations of the forceswhich dominate the fictional heroes and heroines of Camus' novels andnonhistorical 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 tofail. What the defense attorney says of the trial is an apt description ofthe 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 aredrawnfrom the real world;but as a whole, the novel is a parable and mustbe so interpreted. The main theme developed in the novel is death andthe meaning of life that comes out of a confrontation with death. Linkedto the main theme are a number of subsidiary themes, which, like thetheme of death, run through most of the works of Camus: the absurd,revolt, time, lucidity; isolation, estrangement, imprisonment; the dignityand divinity of man; fraternity and solidarity, love; innocence, justice,humiliation. At one point or another in L'Etrangerall of these subsidiarythemes are developed as variations on the main theme.

The hero and narrator of L'Etrangerhas an occupation given him bythe author expressly to universalize the man and his situation. He is aclerk, 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 contemporaryWestern society, plays the role of the traditional hero who faced deathon 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," asCamus calls the absurd hero in Le Mythede Sisyphe. Being a "quotidianadventurer," 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 e l'Etranger,"Cahiers u Sud (fevrier1943).

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Camus'"L'Etranger"almost pure sentience: he hears, touches, sees, tastes, smells; each senseis acute, and his reports are vivid, but while he has vague intuitions andpremonitions, he knowsnothing. His pleasures are a succession of sensualexperiences: smoking, eating, swimming, sexual love. For the absurdhero all experiences are equivalent, so long as the subject is aware; thepresent, and the succession of presents before a sensitive consciousness ishis 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 quetend vers la qualite."9 It can be objected, of course, that Meursault isneither a Don Juan, nor a conqueror, nor an actor, nor a creator, andthat his experiences in Part I are hardly worth making a fuss about. Butthat is just the point. In a world in which everything and everyone isprivileged and therefore equivalent, smoking a cigarette and clippingmineral salts advertisements rank with the ecstasy of loving, or readingShakespeare. In an absurd world not only all sensations, but all actsare 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 onecan deny anything but "ce chaos, ce hasard roi et cette divine equiva-lence qui nait de l'anarchie."10In Part I Meursault is surrounded by what Camus calls "[des] mursabsurdes."1'The exterior world is dense, foreign, and hostile. It refusesto be known, although it can be described. In addition, there is some-thing inhuman and mechanical about what Meursault perceives. InLe Mythe de Sisyphe Camus uses the image of a man seen gesticulatingthrough the glass window of a telephone booth to communicate thisidea. In L'Etrangerthe idea is expressed not only by the succession ofevents in the narrator'slife, but also more directly in the character of thepetiteautomate,who appears suddenly for no apparent reason and thendisappears, only to return during the trial. She sits opposite Meursaultat Celeste's restaurant: "Elle avait des gestes saccades .... Elle s'estassise et a consulte fievreusement la carte.... Elle... a commandeimmediatement tous ses plats d'une voix precipitee ... " She takes outa radio program twelve pages long and checks every single programlisted. She finishes her meal. "Puis elle s'est levee, a remis sa jaquetteavec les memes gestes precis d'automate et elle est partie.... J'aipens6 qu'elle etait bizarre... " The word bizarreappears two or threetimes in this novel: the first time, it is used by Marie to describe Meur-sault, two pages before the appearanceof the odd lady. In an author as

9Le MythedeSisyphe,pp. 88, 100-101. Camushad alreadyremarkedp. 86) that theabsurdhero"par a simplequantitedesexp6riences attraittous les records.!!10Ibid.,p. 73.u Ibid.,p. 24.

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Camus' "L'Etranger"have either declared the act unmotivated or tried to find some rationalpsychological motive to explain it. The truth may be that we ask thewrong question when we ask, "Why did Meursault kill the Arab?" andthat it would be more worth while to ask, "What does the murdermean?"Camus, one of the most self-conscious and intelligent writers of ourtimes, was certainly aware of the mystery that surrounds the murder.He could easily have chosen, for example, to make Meursault kill inobvious self-defense. But he did not. Instead, at the moment of the acthe blinded both hero and reader in an explosion of metaphors. (Afterusing only fifteen metaphors in eighty-three pages Camus uses twenty-five in four pages.)13It is a hallucinatory and cataclysmic event thattakes place: time stops, the world shakes, the sky opens up and rainsdown fire. After eighty pages of plain prose, Camus suddenly resortsto poetry because in the confrontation with death the hero encounterswhat is for Camus the ultimate mystery of the universe.If one asks, "Why did Meursault kill the Arab?" only one answer ispossible: because of the sun, the answer given by Meursault. Chancebrought him to the beach on that particular day and the sun made himpull the trigger. If one asks, "What does the murder mean?" then adifferent order of answers can be found, in the context of the novel as awhole 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 beenreached; everything that precedes prepared the act, and everythingthat follows is an epilogue-a judgment (the trial episode) and aninterpretation of the act (the last chapter). The sudden transformationof the style at the moment of the act is intended to bring the intensity ofthe episode to maximum pitch. In terms of the development of the hero,it is the moment at which consciousness begins. The experience of deathis the catastrophe that illuminates the human condition. From thispoint on, Meursault is no longer a purely sentient consciousness. Hebegins 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, n that sense, is an uncommon term in the first part of thenovel. Camus' use of the sun as the symbol of the ultimate vision oftruth in L'Ete makes it probable that here too the sun, with its terriblebrilliance, is what lights the central truth, that is, death. Each of thethree meetings with death-the burial of the mother, the murder, andthe trial-takes place under the hottest sun of the year. (In the trialepisode 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: mage,InfluenceandSensibility,"YFS, lr, iv, 93-94. Thiscountwas made n the unrevised ditionof L'Etranger.

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Carl A. Viggianicriminal mind.) Why Meursault kills and why he dies remains a mys-tery, however, just as for Camus, the universal and eternal murder ofmen, i.e., the reality of death, is a humiliating and incomprehensiblephenomenon. In social terms, for Camus, murder, or death, is the doorthrough which man enters history. Without death there would be nohuman history: "L'injustice, la fugacite, la mort se manifestent dansl'histoire. En les repoussant, on repousse l'histoire elle-meme" (L'Hommerevolte,p. 357). The same idea is expressed in the Lettresa un ami alle-mand, written shortly after L'Etranger: "Mais vous avez fait ce qu'ilfallait [the Germans went to war], nous sommes entres dans l'Histoire"(p. 80). In other words, without death men would simply be part of aneternal natural order; with death and the awareness of death humanhistory and tragedy begin. This is the paradigm of Meursault's devel-opment. In metaphysical terms the murder is an explosion of revoltagainst the very forces that bring him to his act, and in particular, againstthe sun. Everything that Camus has said about deicide, the implicitidentification of sun and divinity in his works, all the sun symbolism inL'Etrangerand most of his other works, and the imagery of the murderepisode, in which the sun, and not the Arab, is the enemy, suggest thismeaning. 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-wehave been told before the murder-the murderer does not like. In thisrespect, the act is similar to one that Camus finds particularly striking inLes Chants de Maldoror, in which Maldoror-a revolte, according toCamus-attacks the Creator. On the realistic level, the act is repeated inprison, when Meursault assaults the chaplain. Finally, in the moralterms of Le Mythe de Sisyphe, the murder is the logical consequence ofwhat Camus calls a "mal de l'esprit," the absurd sensibility. If all actsare equivalent then murderis inevitable and an indifferent matter.With the murder Meursault becomes a revolte.It is the fate of therevolteto kill both God and men.l4 According to Camus, revolt in thetwentieth century has been betrayed and transformed into uncreativenihilism; Stalinism, Fascism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Formalism are someof its illegitimate progeny. This type of nihilism, which issues in indis-criminate murder, is incarnated on the social level in Camus' works byNada, Caligula, Stepan, and Cottard, whose final act is meant to be anillustration of Breton's declaration that the simplest Surrealist act con-sists in going down into the street, revolver in hand, and firingat randominto 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 larevolte" (L'Hommerevolte,p. 131). "II hait la peine de mort parce qu'elle est l'image de lacondition humaine et, en meme temps, il marche vers le crime" (p. 83).15 A. Breton, Les Manifestes du surrealisme(Paris, 1946), p. 94.

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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 hisnovel, which he finally burns.) The true rebel, however, is distinguishedfrom the nihilist by his willingness to give life for life.16Ivan Kaliayevis the key: "Celui qui accepte de mourir, de payer une vie par unevie, quelles que soient ses negations, affirme du meme coup une valeurqui le depasse lui-meme en tant qu'individu historique ... Kaliayevet ses freres triomphaient du nihilisme."'7Like Kaliayev, Meursault af-firms this fundamental value by accepting from the start the necessityand logic of paying with his life: "J'etais coupable, je payais, on nepouvait rien me demander de plus" (p. 166). To this value is addedanother, the growing and finally absolute lucidity of the hero.The last two parts of L'Etrangeract 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 sametime that the official interrogation begins; the second is the trial. Meur-sault tells the prosecuting attorney at the beginning of the interrogationthat he had lost the habit "of questioning" himself, that he never hadvery 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 bringshim death forces him into the state of lucidity in which he awaits hisexecution. And at one point in the interrogation he says: "II me semblaitque 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, turnsup numerous times in Part II. He becomes interested in himself: "Memesur un banc d'accuse, il est toujours interessant d'entendre parler desoi" (p. 139). He begins to attach some value to his being and objectswhen his attorney follows the tradition of speaking in the first personfor 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 doin his apartment. He even feels that he could easily live in the trunk ofa 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 inprison by losing his sense of time. With his growing ability to see thingsunder the aspect of eternity, time evaporates. Reflection, however, isaccompanied by the development of feelings which, up to the murder,Meursault had not experienced. He says of his attorney: "J'auraisvoulule retenir, lui expliquer que je desirais sa sympathie, non pour 6tremieux d6fendu, mais, si je puis dire, naturellement" (p. 95). He has

"nltue et meurtpourqu'ilsoitclairquele meurtre st impossible"L'Hommevoltt,p. 348).17Ibid., p. 216.

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CarlA. Viggiani"une envie stupide de pleurer" because he knows how detested he is bycourt and public (p. 127). When Celeste has finished his ineffectualtestimony Meursault says that it is the first time in his life that he haswanted to embrace a man. He wishes to explain to the prosecutingattorney "cordially, almost with affection" that he was incapable offeeling regret (p. 143). These are not expressions of overpowering love,certainly, but they are as close as one gets to them in a book consistingin great part of ironic understatement.18They are the first steps towardthe feeling of the "tendre indifference du monde."The trial itself is an ironic recapitulation of everything that happensin Part I. Like the burial and the murder, it takes place under a violentsun that seems to seek him out: "Les d6bats se sont ouverts avec, audehors, tout le plein du soleil" (p. 117); "le soleil s'infiltrait par endroitset 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 turnedupside down: everything that happened to him becomes supremelymeaningful: the exact time of his mother's burial, the fact that hesmoked a cigarette and had a cup of coffee at his mother's wake, thathe 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 andparricide, not homicide. Camus would probably admit that the trialepisode is derivative, and that its Kafkaesque quality is not an accident.The crazy logic of the legal proceedings, while more realistic perhapsthan what happens in Kafka's book, nevertheless has similar overtonesof meaning. Like the problems of death and time, which operate inCamus' works at several levels at once, justice is a theme that he dealswith in social and metaphysical terms. In L'Etrangerthe trial is a par-able of the universal and eternal sentence inflicted on men. It is thesupreme injustice committed against men, and, like the illogic of thetrial 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 whathas preceded.There is practically no irony in it; it is almost all meditation;even the style goes through a partial transformation.19One new charac-ter, the prison chaplain, appears. Aside from this, nothing happens.Time has stopped completely. Meursault's speculations on death and

18As Camus aysin L'Hommeivoltdp.375), "larEvolte e peutse passerd'un trangeamour" italicsmine).19 This shouldbe the subjectof anotherpaper.It is incorrect o speakof thestyle ofL'Etranger.Muchof thestyle of whatI havecalledPartm differs ubstantiallyromthatof Partsi-n.

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Camus'"L'Etranger"the meaning of life, and his final rejection of divinity constitute the bulkof the last chapter. Some of the things he has learned are among thecommonplaces that Western tragedy has exploited since they were firstexpressed 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 allcondemned to death, and yet there is no more important event in aman's life than death: "rien n'etait plus important qu'une executioncapitale ... " (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 thisparaphrase of the Pascalian dictum the novel and the career of the heroexpress their final meaning. The mood of the last page is tranquil. Havingdiscovered the link of solidarity with all men-death-Meursault opensup "pour la premiere fois" to the tender indifference of the world: "Del'eprouver si pareil a moi, si fraternel enfin, j'ai senti que j'avais eteheureux, et que je l'etais encore" (p. 171). Through death he breaksout of the "murs absurdes," and is no longer a stranger. The "je l'etaisencore," as Camus would put it, echoes the "All is well" of Greektragedy. Murder, injustice, condemnation to death, lucidity: this is theroute of Camus' tragic hero, whose career, in its understated, plebeianway is patterned after that of tragic heroes of antiquity. The fate ofMeursault is the universal condition of men, whose history is preciselydeath, 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 bondwith men, that is, having finally experienced love, in his last sentencethe hero expresses the hope that crowds of spectators will witness hisexecution and greet him with cries of hatred. This does not make senseunless it is seen in the light of the concept of the homme-dieu hat Camusdefines in Le Mythede Sisyphe. By the end of the novel, Meursault is anhomme-dieu:to use Camus' terms, he has been duped (the trial), will be"crucified" (the guillotine), he does not serve an immortal being, he hasdenied (killed) God, and thus become God himself, he is persuaded of adeath without an afterlife, and thus he has realized the life eternal ofwhich the Gospel speaks.20His death, like Kirilov's suicide, will be apedagogical act. "Kirilov doit donc se tuer par amour de l'humanite. IIdoit montrer a ses freres une voie royale et difficile sur laquelle il serale premier "(Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 147). But this is also the role of

2O ee the chapteron Kirilov n LeMythedeSisyphe.

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Carl A. Viggianianother sacrificial hero, the Dieu-hommewho dies for the love of men andwho, by his death, shows them a new path. And it is Camus who revealsthe connection between the two figures. Christ, he says, is in a sense (ifthere 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, inother words, to recall the last moments of the Christ, whose crucifixionwas preceded by cries of hatred from the crowds. This is the consumma-tion of the homme-dieu'scareer, Meursault's as well as Christ's. Throughhis death, Meursault gains and exemplifies a new vision of life, indeeda new life. And either consciously or unconsciously, Camus, in the lastparagraph, 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 atout revivre." This is precisely how Meursault feels. Thus Camus wasnot being as paradoxical as he claimed when he wrote: "I1 m'est arrivede dire aussi, et toujours paradoxalement, que j'avais essaye de figurerdans mon personnage le seul Christ que nous meritions."21Meursaultis a Christ figure, just as he is an CEdipusand Sisyphus figure. And thisbrings us back to the starting point of this study, the relationship oftime, theme, and structure in the novel. For part of the historic missionof Christ was precisely the transformation of time and death into eternityand a new life. It also brings us back to names, characters, and symbols:one may well ask, for example, whether the predilection for the nameMarie and names that echo Marie, whether the centrality of the mother,the ritualistic bathing episodes, the concept of the secular saint, are notrelated to the Christ figure. In short, is it not Christ-an absurd Christ,it is true-and not Sisyphus, who is hidden behind the developinghero of Camus' fictions? But this is a question that can only be answeredby Camus himself.This study leaves unsaid much, perhaps most, of what can be saidabout L'Etranger, and if it suggests anything, it is that Camus' slimnovel is a rich and complex work, whose artistry and thought we havenot yet fully appreciated. It is not only one of the most significant booksof our times in the ideas and feelings that it incarnates, but it is also,despite its exterior simplicity, an intricate artistic mechanism, whichreveals more of its wealth of meaning and complexity each time it isread.

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITYMiddletown, Conn.

21 L'Etranger (New York, 1955), Avant-Propos, p. viii.

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