ROGER SHATTUCK
439
assumes the monstrous form of sheer accident enacted as inexorable fate.
A slow accumulation of fragmentary sensations absorbs us into a mind
that does not draw back from - from what? From letting his "whole be–
ing tense up" in such a way as to make him squeeze the trigger of the
loaded gun that just happens to be in his hand. But the deafening report
of the shot wakes him at last out of his zombie-like existence. At that
moment "everything began," and Meursault "understood" what had hap–
pened, what he had done. Instead of recoiling, he now affirms his half–
conscious deed by deliberately firing four more shots into the dead Arab.
The sleepwalker becomes a criminal who feels exhilaration. He does not
become a human being appalled at the spectacle of murder. The shock of
a criminal act gives Meursault his first startling experience of being alive as
himsel£
"It requires a considerable effort on [the reader's] part to disengage
himself from the rhetoric of the story to the extent of recognizing some–
thing monstrous" in the principal character. What Denis Donoghue says
in
Thieves of Fire
about D. H . Lawrence's story, "The Captain's Doll,"
applies accurately to readers of
The Stranger.
Most readers accept their first
sympathetic response to poor, unambitious, victimized Meursault. The
seemingly artless way he tells his own story disarms our ability to detect
an unreliable narrator.
The Stranger
offers the most convincing version
ever written, I would say, of the sincerity plea made in exoneration of an
incontrovertibly criminal action. The rhetoric apparently deceived Camus
himself a decade later. Meursault's "sincerity" in Part One lies close to in–
cipient autism. In Part Two, during the extended process of waking up to
himself as a responsible person, Meursault yearns both to revert to the
soulless existence of Part One and to dismiss the perfectly justified guilty
verdict by defying it. Both responses constitute a lie to himself as a po–
tential human being
I cannot help seeing this miniature novel called
The Stranger
as a par–
able, a piece of subtle didactic writing whose meaning reveals itself
gradually to those who read carefully. But because of the subtle blandish–
ments of the inside narrative, which often seduce readers and even the
author into empathizing with a criminal, the parable misfires. The moral
lesson, that no existence can be called human that does not accept a
minimum of responsibility for itself, for its actions, and for others, is too
easily overlooked. I remain astonished at the extent of misunderstanding
and distortion that Camus expressed in his 1955 preface.
I believe a proverb will help explain why so many readers of
The
Stranger
are led into seeing a monstrous criminal as a hero of authenticity,
and why the dilemma of Captain Vere in
Billy Budd
develops a very dif-
