A Brief Analysis of the Algerian Character in Albert Camus’ Short Story the Guest

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Albert Camus’ short story The Guest shows how the French treated the Algerians during the time of colonization. Throughout the text, the Arab prisoner is dehumanized and deprived from his identity. From the beginning of the story, the Arab prisoner is pictured as brutal, naïve and primitive. Balducci who is the old gendarme leads the Arab prisoner as not he leads an organic object or rather a human being as the narrator says “Balducci was holding on the end of the rope an Arab who was walking behind him with hands bound and head lowered.” In fact, we even don’t know or rather it is not mentioned the prisoner’s name. He is simply “the Arab.” The prisoner is just a farmer who kills his cousin due to “a family squabble,” for grain. As a matter of fact, having always lived under French law and authority with no education, facilities and independence, an Arab can follow only the negative aspects of life because he is unemployed and indifferent about the consequences of his actions. The Arab hardly knows why he kills his cousin as he states “he ran away, I ran after him.” Since he cannot speak French, he cannot justify himself. Moreover, he is arrested not according to the Arab justice but by the French colonizer. A little is said about Daru’s physical characteristics or Balducci’s, instead the Arab features are described in some details. Actually, there is a connection between the prisoner features and the physical environment in the story. Daru notices his “huge lips, fat, smooth, almost Negroid.” The Arab has an “obstinate forehead,” “weathered skin,” and “discolored by the cold.” Daru’s view of the prisoner has been shaped by his culture, his experience as a teacher and the politics of French colonialism. On the other hand the prisoner has been shaped his traditions cutoms, relationships and commitments. The prisoner at no point makes a motion

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