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sume that Meursault has told his story honestly and sincerely. What more
can we want? The second group of students had read
Billy Budd
earlier
and had discussed the tragic necessity of Captain Vere's drumhead court
and its verdict. (Many questioned, very properly, the need for summary
execution.) Now, when asked to assume the role of Captain Vere in
facing a comparable situation, many of them capitulated to the subtle, un–
demonstrative voice of Meursault narrating his own tale. Camus created a
cool, flat, artificially natural style for most of the episodes. Set against that
monotonous landscape, the semi-ritualistic killing on the beach releases in
Meursault a glorious burst oflyric intensity. The murder scene combines
the crescendos of a gratuitous act and. an epiphany. The seizure of that
moment apparently makes Meursault lose consciousness and suffer mem–
ory loss. His later attitudes and behavior remain mysterious because we
are never given a full account of what happened right after the murder
and of how he was apprehended.
Camus's narrative has the power of magic incantation in modern
dress.
It
makes one forget that Meursault never thinks of or refers to the
human being he has killed. He experiences no regret, no remorse. To the
examining magistrate Meursault identifies his feelings about the deed as
ennui.
On the last page of the novel, by saying "I felt ready to live it all
over again," he appears to reaffirm his crime and his punishment as the
only source of his identity, as his signature. Is this laconic murderer our
modern Prometheus? Can any person so disingenuous, so unambitious,
and so unassuming as Meursault possibly be a monster? Camus himself
compounds the difficulty in the brief preface he wrote in 1955 for an
American textbook edition of The
Stranger:
Sometime ago I summed up
The Stranger
in a sentence, which I grant is very
paradoxical: "In our society any man who doesn't cry at his mother's burial runs
the risk of being condemned to death." I meant simply that the book's hero is
condemned because he doesn't play the game.. .. He refuses to lie.
For me Meursault is no derelict but a poor naked man in love with a sun that
leaves no shadows. Far from lacking feeling, he is animated by a profound passion
- profound because it remains mute, a passion for the absolute and for the truth.
I have also gone so far as to say, paradoxically once again, that I tried to present
in Meursault the only Christ we deserve. It should be clear from my remarks that
I intend no blasphemy and speak only with the slightly ironic affection an artist
has the right to feel toward the characters he has created.
