“Existence precedes essence” The lone thing we can’t non make is non choose. The narrative of The Guest is about Daru. a alone school teacher in Camus’ boyhood place of Algeria. Daru likes life in purdah. but he must larn to acknowledge that picks are ineluctable and that his picks affair. The narrative takes topographic point in the center of the 19th century when Algeria is still a land full of struggle between the laden Algerian people and their Gallic colonial swayers. At the beginning of the narrative the Gallic send the gendarme. Balducci to Daru with an Arab convicted of slaying.
Through Balducci the captive comes under the charge of Daru. who must take whether to turn him over to the jurisprudence or act harmonizing to his award and allow him travel free. During the Arab’s overnight remain. Daru and his invitee develop a bond that teaches Daru about the brotherhood of world and his equality with this captive. a condemnable from a different race. For an existential philosopher. Daru’s place is important ; before him lies a morally equivocal state of affairs and a quandary he can non get away.
He faces two options. one to manus his invitee over to the governments and earn the hate of the Algerian people. or two break free from the codification of society and assist him to travel free. deriving him his ain people’s disapproval. Although a contention determination he takes a base and Tells Balducci that he refuses to turn his guest in. Choice is unequivocal of the nature of an person. You don’t cognize a person’s picks until they make them. Therefore. our nature unfolds in the clip of populating our lives. Once a bond develops between the two. invitee and host. Daru decides to offer the pick to the captive.
Entirely in a hostile universe. Daru illustrates the thought of the absurd hero that is at the root of Camus’ doctrine. In a silent. meaningless universe where the homo is the lone value. we see the absurd in the individual’s effort to make his significance. Camus believed that worlds must make their ain kernel. specifying themselves through active picks. As the supporter of the narrative. Daru expresses what Camus sees as the positive consequences of confronting human duty. He revolts because one must be willing. if necessary. to do a determination that goes against the norm in order to confirm humanity.
Daru rebellions when he treats the Arab as a brother and offers him freedom. In the existential philosopher doctrine there is no moral guilt for an action. merely a person’s pick and the consequences. Any guilt is found in people like Balducci who choose to take no action. In accepting this duty. Daru accepts the cardinal human freedom of pick. non merely in himself but in the adult male to whom he gives the autonomy to make up one’s mind his ain destiny. In the narrative. the thought of the absurd hero leaves the manner unfastened for the birth of heroes such as Daru and such as the Arab might hold been if he had had the bravery to turn from the way taking to his ain destiny.
Daru can be called an experiential hero because he makes a determination that defines himself in footings of award and bravery. He made a applaudable determination in allowing the captive the freedom to take. As an existential philosopher hero he receives no favour from the existence for his action. He acts entirely. This is his absurdness. but it is besides his illustriousness. The significance of his determination. Makes him the absurd hero. The narrative radiances with love for life and beauty. with Daru’s intense pleasance in the vivacious scenery. Camus negotiations of sunshine and snow. and in depicting the land. he alludes to its beauty every bit good as its enormousness.
From his schoolhouse on a clear twenty-four hours. Daru can see the purple mountains stat mis off and beyond to the desert. He peculiarly notices the beauty of the landscape the twenty-four hours he leaves the schoolhouse to direct the Arab on his manner. In this broad landscape of Algeria Camus found an appropriate scene to foreground Daru’s loneliness and draw attending to the cold emptiness of the background. For Camus Algeria was the land of the summer sky emptied of tenderness. beneath which all truths can be told and on which no deceitful deity has traced the marks of hope or of salvation.
In the narrative he describes the scenery through the eyes of Daru. he give us the feeling of how loneliness it is and how abandoned Daru is. This is the manner it was: bare stone covered three quarters of the part. Towns sprang up. flourished. so disappeared ; work forces came by. loved one another or fought bitterly. so died. No 1 in this desert. neither he nor his invitee. mattered. Daru waits in his alone schoolhouse on the snow-clad tableland. cut off from civilisation by a snowstorm. This waste land where endurance is hard is a “solitary sweep where nil had any connexion with man” .
This subject of purdah provides the key to the importance of Daru and his picks. Daru likes the farness and isolation of the tableland. and at foremost he finds it hard to accept the presence of another human being in the same sleeping quarters. Daru. who sleeps naked at dark. feels vulnerable in the Arab’s company. He can non kip because he is believing about the determination and the adult male nearby. During his stay in the schoolhouse Daru learns to accept the adult male. murderer though he is. as an equal and his brother.
Though this adult male is a beginning of problem to him. stripped of his pretences of high quality gained by his relation to the Gallic residents. Daru is a adult male like his invitee. brought together with him. paradoxically. through their loneliness in an unsympathetic universe. In the cold work forces huddle together for heat. The state of affairs reminds Daru of “men who portion the same suites. soldiers or captives. [ who ] develop a unusual confederation as if. holding cast off their armour with their vesture. they fraternized every eventide. over and above their differences. in the ancient community of dream and fatigue” .
The bond he develops with his invitee allows Daru to acknowledge the Arab’s freedom and duty. Daru’s invitee and the pick he faces aid him to understand and accept his place. his isolation. his duty. and his brother’s freedom. In accepting it he becomes the hero. Supremely thankless. he returns to the schoolhouse entirely. Man is nil else but what he makes of himself. we make determinations. and these determinations constitute our nature.
