The Guest

Daru leads a solitary life in every sense; he lives alone and is forced to fend for himself emotionally and morally. He works as a schoolmaster, having been assigned to a posting on a high and remote plateau. His only companions are the students he teaches, and occasionally military policemen like Balducci. This physical detachment from others reflects his emotional isolation. He seems to have no one else in the world with whom he can share his burdens, as Camus never mentions another person who might offer Daru guidance or share the weight of his choices. Everything he does, he does alone.

The story further emphasizes this sense of isolation through the fact that Daru cannot communicate properly with his prisoner, because they only have the rudiments of a common language. Despite being physically together, they are emotionally isolated from one another. He can’t make his prisoner confide in him, nor can he be sure that the other man understands what he’s saying. Although Daru does feel a brief sense of companionship with the Arab when the two men share a room, he rejects that feeling as being inconvenient and untrustworthy.

Daru is likewise isolated by his moral choices. In making the choice not to deliver the prisoner as Balducci asks, he alienates himself from the gendarme. The ending of the story further hammers home the fact that Daru is completely alone. Even though he didn’t turn the Arab in, the fact that they left the schoolhouse together was enough to make the Arab’s “brothers” swear revenge on him. Because there were no witnesses to Daru’s choice and the Arab chose to walk east toward prison instead of south toward shelter, Daru still faces the physical consequences of turning him in—that is, he will likely be killed. Although it’s bleak, Daru’s aloneness also has a silver lining. Even though he begins and ends the tale alone, he makes the best of his situation and tries to exercise kindness and good moral judgment wherever he can. In this way, Camus suggests that it is worthwhile for human beings to try to act honorably and morally, even if they act alone.