Albert Camus' L'Etranger: A Parable of the Overthrow of French Rule in Algeria
2015; Pittsburg State University; Volume: 57; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-3451
Autores Tópico(s)North African History and Literature
ResumoMost of recent examinations of Albert Camus' famous novel, The Stranger, view book and its author as callous toward Arab inhabitants of Algeria, racially prejudiced, and perceiving Arab natives as mere objects for brutal exploitation by French colons (also called piedsnoirs). A recent study of Algerian history briefly summarizes this shaky consensus: his fiction, most famously in his 1942 novel The Outsider [title of British translation of L'Etranger], natives tended to treated in generic terms and were always prone to violence and irrationality (40-41). The authors of this deprecatory statement do not attempt to support it with references to L'Etranger. A close examination of depiction of Arabs in L'Etranger makes clear that although Meursault kills an Arab, Muslim characters do not otherwise play a prominent role in novel; nor are they negatively depicted as brutal felons. Indeed, French colons, particularly Meursault's quondam friend Raymond, behave more irrationally and aggressively than Arabs, whom Camus portrays as stoic, peaceful people, perhaps awaiting their opportunity to gain revenge and take back their country. Among Camus' subordinate objectives in L'Etranger may have been criticism of France's harsh policies toward Muslims and French indifference to oppression they inflicted. In novel, he makes clear that Algiers court sentences his protagonist Meursault to death more for not crying at his mother's funeral than for killing an Arab. In his Notebooks [Carnets], Camus commented about L'Etranger: Conclusion: society needs people who cry at their mothers funeral; or else you are never condemned for crime you think you will be [i.e., killing Arab] (qtd. in Hargreaves 103). As Philip Thody writes, Throughout trial, no mention is made of Arab who was killed (Thody 42). On other hand, L'Etranger contains a muted cry against exploitation and injustices French imperialism perpetrated against Arabs and Muslims. For instance, Camus, by depicting beating of an Arab woman, who may have been a prostitute, by Raymond Sintes, her ex-boyfriend and possibly former pimp, protested French occupation of Algeria. She represents rape and exploitation of Algeria by European colons. When, after being called by a tenant of Meursault's building, an officer comes to Raymonds apartment to investigate her screams, Raymonds nameless Arab woman up. beat me up, she shrieks. He's a pimp (Ward 36). The young Arab woman's terse vocabulary figuratively alludes to French pieds-noirs' century-long pimping on native lands and peoples of Algeria. In article, Plot and Counterplot in L'Etranger, literary critic Dorothy Bryson argues that Camus demonstrated moral values, not anti-Arab prejudice, in L'Etranger. According to her, Camus sought to achieve balance and justice through Meursault's execution for killing Arab, even though it was essentially an involuntary act. She considers his death sentence a surrogate punishment for his complicity in voluntarily writing letter for Raymond that deceived his mistress, precipitated her beating, and set in motion events that led to shooting of Arab and Meursault's unexpected conviction (unlikely in white-controlled Francophone countries) for murdering native. Alec Hargreaves is a British scholar critical of Francophone Camus. He claims that The Stranger reveals Camus' hostility to Arabs, since Meursault, novel's hero, remorselessly murders an Arab. In addition, Hargreaves charges that, although Algiers is backdrop for elucidating L'Etranger's absurd Existential viewpoint, content of Camus' philosophy is solely European, and reflects the ethnic and historical position from which he speaks (103). The typical Algerian Muslim would have found L'Etranger's picture of cosmic meaninglessness alien; in any case, few Muslims could read French, and most went without schooling. …
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