"The absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.
Albert Camus uses "The Guest " ˜to communicate the separation that humans experience at heart, his idea of absurdity and a sense of moral distress. Throughout the story there is the acceptance of human responsibility while recognizing the purposelessness of life. The Guest presents Camus' claim that humans can create their condition through acts and believes in the power of the world.
The story takes place in the nineteenth century when algeria is a land full of conflict between the enslaved algerian people and their french colonial rulers. The story is about a Man name Daru who is a lonesome schoolteacher in camus boyhood home of algeria. Daru like the idea of living a lonely life but he need to learn that choices are necessary and that his choices matter.
The story begins with when the french send the gendarme, Balducci to Daru with a Arab convicted with murder. When the Balducci the prisoner came under the charge of daru he must choose whether to turn him over to the law or grant him the chances to go free.
that night Daru and his guest develop a bond that taught daru equality with the prisoner a criminal from a different race. The theme of emptiness provides the key to the importance of Daru and his choices. Daru likes the separation and isolation of the evaluation and at first he finds it difficult to accept the presence of another human being in the same sleeping quarters has him. Daru, who sleeps naked at night, feels defenseless in the Arab's company. He cannot sleep because he is thinking about the decision and the man nearby; .
In this room where he had been sleeping .
alone for a year, this presence bothered .
him. But it bothered him also by imposing .
on him a sort of brotherhood he knew .
well but refused to accept i the .
present circumstances. (236).
During his stay in the schoolhouse Daru learns to accept the man, murderer though he is, as an equal and his brother.