Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The Guest is a short story of Albert Camus that has remained in my consciousness for years. The protagonist, Daru, is a French schoolteacher who lives in his “schoolhouse” on a remote hillside “almost like a monk.” The setting is during the Algerian War of Independence against France. One day Daru finds himself ordered by a French gendarme to keep an Arab murderer with him for the night before taking him to the police authorities the next morning. Daru is not a shallow nationalist who will do anything that his country demands merely because he was born in that country. He believes in his own individual rights and moral duties more than in national obligations. What do patriotism and nationalism mean if they demand actions from you that go against your personal convictions? You become antinational. You can be labelled anything like ‘a terrorist’ or ‘an urban Naxal.’ You can be arrested and killed by your nation though you have done nothing wrong by your personal morality and convic...

‘The Guest’ is a short story by Nobel laureate, Albert Camus.  It tells the story of Daru, a schoolteacher, who lives in his “schoolhouse” on a remote hillside “almost like a monk”.  One day a gendarme brings an Arab who killed his cousin in a family squabble to Daru’s schoolhouse.  Since it is wartime Daru is asked to take the murderer the next day to the police headquarters which is 20 km away.  Daru thinks it is a dishonourable job handing over any person to the police.  He hates the Arab for committing the crime.  He tells the gendarme that he will disobey the order in spite of the latter’s warning about the consequences.  And disobey he does.  The Arab is left untied in the night.  When he gets up and goes outside Daru hopes that he will run away.  But he returns to bed soon.  Daru takes him the next day having given him enough food to last for two days, instructs him about the way through the mountains to the po...