Strangers across Time and Novels

Albert Camus’ The Stranger and Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation, although written 71 years apart, tell two different parts of the same story. In The Stranger, the reader is introduced to Meursault, a somewhat peculiar man who is governed mostly by his physical sensations and does not seem to feel many emotions.[1] In the course of the novel, he murders an anonymous Arab on the beach, driven mad by the heat and the sun. 71 years later, Harun Ould el-Assasse, the brother of the unknown Arab is able to tell his story in The Meursault Investigation. Harun wants to ensure that his brother is given the name which is rightfully his: Musa. The two novels share a story, told from different perspectives, separated by the divide made by the colonials in society. This shared story ensures that there are many similarities between the novels, as well as plenty of differences. How do the authors of both books handle the concept of “otherness” and how are the murder scenes in the novels both similar and different? In order to properly answer this central question, it is important to first define the concept of “otherness”, and then to analyse this concept of otherness in the two novels. Besides the obvious otherness caused by colonisation, there is another, deeper kind of otherness that can be found in both novels. Both authors have worked this concept into their novel in a different way, with a similar result. After this analysis, the murder scenes in both novels will be analysed to compare the differences and similarities between the two.

Otherness can be described as the result of a discursive process by which a dominant group constructs its closed identity, thereby inherently constructing one or many out-groups by stigmatizing a difference. The “us”, or in-group establishes a certain identity, which always excludes one or many “them”, or out-groups.[2] Otherness, it seems, is inherently a matter of “us” versus “them”. The out-group is only a coherent entity because of the opposition to the in-group and its lack of identity. This lack is always based on the stereotypes that are largely stigmatizing and simplistic.[3] This creation of the other is not limited to certain societies, however, Western societies have an advantage other societies don’t poses. Otherness and identity are based on binary logic.[4] Identity is the factor that is required to create the sense of “us”, and thus to create “them”. The main advantage that Western societies possessed was colonization. This colonization allowed the Westerners to export their values, and through a process of cultural integration, have these accepted all over the world.[5] The concept of otherness can be found in both novels in two ways.

In The Stranger, the story is told through a Frenchman, Meursault. He is a simple clerk who lives in Algiers, and he does not really seem to care about much but his physical needs. Something that stands out in the novel is the fact that it lacks any kind of elaborate description. The reader isn’t given a clear idea of how Meursault, of how anyone looks in the novel. The description of Raymond Sintès is the most elaborate anyone is described, and all that is told is that Raymond is “a little on the short side, with broad shoulders and a nose like a boxer’s”.[6] The only information about other people in the novel is the fact if they are young, old, male or female. People of other ethnicity aren’t described at all, the only information about them is their ethnicity, most notably: the “Arabs”. The description of “Arab” is given 25 times throughout the novel. This is the first kind of otherness that is noticed in the novel. This difference in ethnicity is most clearly visible. In this division of otherness, Meursault clearly belongs to the in-group, the descendants of the colonialists. They are, according to themselves, the better part of society. This is made quite clear due to a lack of Arabs in Meursault’s “normal” neighbourhood, but once he is arrested and put in jail, they form the biggest part of the prison’s population. This is described in the scene when Marie comes to visit Meursault in prison. On his side, there are approximately ten prisoners, most of them Arabs. Marie is apparently surrounded by Moorish women, most of whom talk loud with wild gestures. Marie stands out with her suntanned face and her striped dress.[7] While the novel lacks any vivid description, the difference between Meursault and the Arab that he shoots on the beach is quite clearly. In the stranger, the murder victim is never given a name, and during the trial, the focus is placed on whole different kind of otherness.

During the novel, Meursault seems a bit strange. He shows no emotion at his mother’s passing, not even during the vigil or during her funeral. The day following her funeral, he goes to see a comedic film with his girlfriend, after spending a fun day at the beach together. When Marie asks him if he loves her, he answers that it does not really matter. He does not lie, he simply does not seem to feel. This fact disturbs other people, enrages them, and makes them question his humanity.[8] Essentially, Meursault is a stranger in his own environment.[9] This otherness within Meursault is especially clear in the second half of the novel, during Meursault’s trial and imprisonment. It is not until he is brought to the courtroom on the day of his trial that he realises that he finds himself in a world where the people consider him to be a stranger, which they have come there to judge, while he has never questioned or judged them. The whole trial of Meursault is staged in such a way that the final conclusion is inevitable: Meursault is a danger to society. Not because he has committed an act of murder, but because he has ignored the masses’ norms and values.[10] In this sense, Meursault can be considered a victim of the judicial system. Yes, he has committed an act of murder, and he is arrested and interrogated for it, but during his trial this fact is completely ignored. Because Meursault has committed a serious crime, he loses his place in colonial society, but he has also lost his identity, and his rights as a French citizen. He has lost the right to be on the French side of the divide, as well as the bars, that colonial society has made between “us” and “them”. The only way for Meursault to regain these rights would be to prove in a court of law that he is innocent of the crime of which he is accused. Since the trial mostly ignores the actual murder, the question must be asked what crime this is. In a sense Meursault is being convicted for being different, for not conforming to the “norm” of being “normal”. In court, Meursault is asked to prove nothing less than that he is of the same nature as those who are there to judge him: he needs to prove beyond all doubt that he is indeed a true Frenchman. The trial is staged to prove that Meursault is not French, that he is inhuman, a monster. One of “them”, an alien enemy of the collective “us”.[11] Richard Kamber writes that Meursault is “an incarnation of the absurd hero. What is 'monstrous’ about this man is not his propensity to commit crimes or do evil; it is, rather, his indifference to the hopes, faith, and ideals by which most people live. By not caring about God, his own future, or what respectable people think about him, Meursault has become a dangerous man, a rebel”.[12] Although the two kinds of otherness are both present in Camus’ The Stranger, the focus is placed on the second kind. Meursault is considered to be an outcast of society because he does not conform to what is considered to be normal in his society. This nonconforming element of Meursault ensures that he is considered a stranger, an outsider. Humans are scared of those who don’t conform to their values, to their way of life. Thus, even though Meursault has committed a murder, this is not the sole reason he is condemned to death. He is condemned, because he is essentially “the other”, “them” instead of “us”.

Daoud’s novel is written from the other side of the divide already established in The Stranger. Harun grows up in Algiers in a working-class neighbourhood, as a part of the out-group of the Algerian society. This gave him different, clearer insights into the divide that Meursault only describes by calling everyone of Arabic descent an “Arab”. The Stranger lacks any clear descriptions of any characters in the novel, while The Meursault Investigation is full of them, especially on page 17, where Harun describes his neighbourhood. In his description, Harun focusses specifically on the people that live in this neighbourhood with him. While reading the page, the people, the routine of the day is described to the reader, pointing out a sense of loss that existed while reading The Stranger.

            The sense of otherness is stronger while reading The Meursault Investigation, precisely because it was written from the other perspective. For a specific group of Western readers, reading this novel will give a bit of insights into the colonial society and more importantly, of the aftermath of colonialism. The story starts off in Oran, in a bar where Harun has decided to spend the rest of his days. One day, a young professor walks into this bar, who apparently has come in search of Harun, to learn the other part of the story that was not described in The Stranger. This young professor never speaks in the novel, the entire novel seems to be a monologue by Harun, remembering different parts of his long life. The professor is the reader’s substitute: he serves as a tool for Harun to speak ‘directly’ to the reader. This directness ensures that the story is indeed very lively, even though at some points, a little hard to follow. The novel partially covers the same period of time that has been described in Camus’s famous novel. The story is however now told from the colonial other, from a member of Meursault’s “out-group”. Harun considers Meursault and all other Frenchman to be outsiders, Roumis who no longer have a prominent position or place in Algerian society. [13] The NLF won the Algerian war for Independence, after which the French fled the country. According to Harun, there are only three things they left behind: “words, roads and bones”.[14] For Harun, the legacy of the French colonialists is a particularly bad one, and the NLF hasn’t proved to do much better. Under the French colonial rule, Musa was murdered. No one in the French justice system ever bothered to give him a name, to see if he had a family. This remained the same after the independence: “Musa was an Arab replaceable by a thousand others of his kind, or by a cow, even, or a reed, or whatever else; the beach has disappeared, erased by footprints or agglomerations of concrete; the only witness was a star, namely the sun; the plaintiffs were illiterate, and they moved out of town; and finally the trial was a wicked travesty put on by idle colonials”.^[15]

            In a certain way, Harun’s anger is focussed mainly on the fact that Musa was never named, and the fact that during the trial of his murderer, the murder was mostly ignored. It has been described that the French staged Meursault’s trial as to convict him for being a “stranger, an outsider”. In this sense, the French completely ignored the primary victim in the case: the Arab who has been murdered. This injustice is enough to ensure that Harun, a lifetime later, still feels anger when he thinks about this.[16] This anger ensures that Harun wants to make it clear where the divide between his and “their” world could be found, the difference between “our world and the world of the roumis, down in the French neighbourhoods”.^[17] The divide between “us” and “them” is imposed by the dominant group, specifically to impose the value of its peculiarity and to devalue the peculiarity of the others while imposing the corresponding discriminatory measures.^[18] By imposing the divide between the French and Arab Algerians, the French implicitly devalued the peculiarity of the Arabs, making it seem as if their culture is worth less than the French culture. This divide is a fact of life for Harun, and in a way he takes pride in being different from the French roumis. When speaking about the differences between the Arabs and the French, he almost always calls the French roumis, strangers, and outsiders. The concept of name is also very important to Harun. It almost seems as if Meursault considers everyone that isn’t a Frenchman to be an Arab. This is the only other ethnic group that is ever mentioned in The Stranger. Meursault, and often many colonisers who consider the others to be less than them, never bother to learn their names, to find out who they are. Harun makes a point of telling us the names of the people that he has met in his childhood or his life. He makes a point of describing everyone he sees and meets, of mentioning their names. When he does not know their names, he gives them one. In the beginning of the novel he says: “My countrymen have a habit of calling anybody they don’t know “Mohammed”, but the name I give everyone is “Musa””.[19] The reason he makes such a point of giving everyone a name stems from his anger of the lack of attention given to his brother when he was murdered. Musa couldn’t even be given a name, but was instead characterised – 25 times during the novel – as the anonymous “Arab”.[20] The Arab in Camus’ novel has become a kind of an Algerian “John Doe”, a placeholder for an unknown identity.[21] This anonymity ensured that they were never able to find Musa’s body, that they were never able to properly say goodbye to him. To even get the authorities to acknowledge that he existed is impossible: there is no evidence of his life, of his existence. This is why Harun is so insistent on the professor writing down his brother’s name, about giving everyone a name. To name someone is to bestow a sense of self upon them, an identity. An identity is what is required to be remembered, to be acknowledged as an existing person. Musa had a name, but the Arab shot at the beach cannot be identified as him. He had a name, he had an identity, but he wasn’t known as Musa to Meursault. To Meursault he was just the Arab he shot at the beach. The Arab was all that the court system ever called him, and the trial that should have been about obtaining justice for his murder, was twisted and made about the fear present in the Colonial Society. Meursault had killed the Arab, but he was not like the other Frenchman. He did not cry at his mother’s funeral, and thus he was a danger to society, a danger that had to be dealt with. Musa’s name was lost to history, and as such, Musa does not exist too many people. But Musa did exist, and in Harun’s act of naming everybody Musa, he is both remembering his brother and the importance of a name. At the same time, by naming everyone Musa, the importance of the name is taken down: Musa could be anyone, so anyone could have been the anonymous Arab who was shot on the beach so many years ago.

            This insistence on naming everyone, and the way that Harun’s life was changed at such an early age, made Harun a stranger to his society, much in the same way that Meursault was to his. Throughout the novel, Harun is very critical of Meursault, but he seems to be unaware of the fact that he is very much like Meursault, in many unsettling ways.[22] Because of the course that Harun’s life has taken, he has become a sort of outsider in his own society. Musa was murdered when Harun was only 7 years old, and shortly after his death, his mother forces him to become a substitute of the son that she lost. Once he has grown a little, she gives him Musa’s old clothes to wear, even though he is still too young for them to fit properly. He is forced to wear Musa’s old clothes until these are finally worn out and there are none left. His mother is always watching him and never allows him to stray far away. Even in the neighbourhood where he grew up, he is now seen as the little brother of Musa, who was murdered by the Frenchman.^[23] At one point in the novel, he describes himself as the son of the guardian, and the brother of the Arab.[24] Harun was so young when all these events took place, and during its horrendous aftermath he was forced to become a substitute for his brother. This ensured he would never be able to fully become his own individual, to find out who he was meant to be. Even as an old man, Harun is still telling the story of his brother, wanting him to be remembered, but also wanting to be free of his history. When he dies, he wants to be able to pass on without being haunted by his brother’s ghost. Like Meursault, Harun finds himself outside his own societal group: he is an outsiders of a group that always used to be the outsider. Harun never got married, never had his own family. His mother is still alive, but she no longer speaks to him. In a way, the bar where Harun spends his days is like the cell where Meursault spent his final months. Of course, Harun is free to leave, but the space of the bar is where Harun remembers his life, remembers the people of his childhood. In a way, he lives in the past, as he has nothing else to live for.

            It is clear throughout the novel that Harun is very critical of Meursault, and it would make sense for Harun to dislike the man who was responsible for the death of his brother, whether the courts see it this way or not. But even though Harun is so critical of Meursault, he is a lot like him. His prose and especially his experiences in his life align him with Meursault, the man he considers to be the villain of his brother’s story. [25] Meursault is not the only murderer of the two; in 1962, Harun too commits a murder. Meursault shot “the Arab”, and Harun shot “the Frenchman” known as Joseph. Both characters are considered to be outsiders in their societal group because of the way they are. Meursault did not behave according to the norms of French society when he showed no emotion at his mother’s passing, and Harun refused to fight in the Algerian war for Independence. After committing murder, both are arrested, but Harun is released where Meursault is convicted. During their time in jail, both men are visited by a holy man of their religion, and both turn the holy man away. Meursault admits that he hates Sundays, while Harun tells the professor that he is bored out of his mind every Friday.[26] These are only the differences in the characters themselves. There are many other similarities which connect the two stories together, most importantly the murder scenes. The murder scenes are both different, and at the same time are the exact mirror image of the other. In The Stranger, which takes place in 1942, an unknown Arab is murdered on a sunlit beach near Algiers at 2 P.M.. Meursault, driven crazy by the blazing heat on this hot summer’s day continued walking, even though the sun was starting to be unbearable to him. Meursault realised that he could have just walked away, but the “whole beach, throbbing in the sun, was pressing on my back”.[27] The sun was starting to burn his cheeks, and sweat was dripping into his eyebrows. As Meursault approached, the Arab drew his knife. The sunlight shot off the blade, and reflected on Meursault’s forehead. That’s when the trigger gave, and the sound rung out across the beach. Then he fired four more rounds into his unmoving victim, “and it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness”.[28] During this short scene, the effects of the sun and the heat are described in great detail. In a way, it seems as if the sun was responsible for Meursault pulling the trigger, driving him mad with heat.

            The murder in The Meursault Investigation takes place at night, at 2 A.M.. A Frenchman is on the run from a group of Algerians and tries to take refuge in the home that Harun and his mother have claimed after the colonists who lived there fled the country. Two shots are fired, and Harun notes that that makes seven shots in total, even though the first five shots were fired so many years ago. One shot in the belly, one shot in the neck. Harun feels the cold in the armpit of his outstretched arm, feels the sweat and gunpowder on his hand and notices his victim’s big, surprised eyes. Harun notices the big luminous moon, it seemed so close, one only had to jump up to touch it.[29] His mother was standing behind him, almost pushing him to take the shot, like the beach, the heat was pushing Meursault. Harun notices after he shot the Frenchman that his mother is able to breathe calmly. After Musa’s death, all she was able to do was wheeze.[30] In the years following Musa’s murder, Harun and his mother are unknowingly waiting for anyone who can die at their hands as a form of retribution. They are waiting for an opportunity to expiate their guilt over their prolonged impotence after Musa’s murder.[31] They have been unable to prove to the authorities that Musa was their family, they have been unable to give him the burial he deserved, and they feel a sense of shame in the face of this failure. The biggest differences between the murders can be found in the aftermath: both characters are arrested, but Meursault is tried and convicted, while Harun is only scrutinized for not joining the rebellion before the NLF lets him go. During the aftermath of the murder, Harun gives the professor the name of his victim: Joseph.[32] Kamel Daoud could have easily chosen to allow his victim to remain nameless as his brother has been left nameless in The Stranger, but he has chosen not to. As Harun states earlier in the novel: “It’s as important to give a dead man a name as it is to name a newborn infant.”[33]

            Alice Kaplan wrote: “Meursault killed Musa in 1942, and Musa and Harun are brothers, but in 1962 Harun and Meursault become brothers too – brothers in the violence of history”.[34] This is essentially what connects the two main characters: both Meursault and Harun are forced to live on the outskirts of society, both committed a horrendous crime, forced in some way by external factors. Meursault felt the pressure of the heat and the sun, while Harun felt his mother’s thirst for revenge and was in a way blinded by the bright light of the moon. Harun, like Meursault, never figured out more about the Frenchman than his name. The reader learns the Frenchman’s name, but it is unknown if Joseph had a family, someone he loved, or someone who was waiting for him to join them in safety. It is as if by learning his name, Harun has acknowledged the identity of his victim, but does not want to know more. He rages about the fact that Musa will always be the Arab, that no one ever bothered to find out if Musa has a family, and at the same time doesn’t want to find out these things about his victim either.

Both Camus and Daoud have worked the concept of otherness into their novels in two ways. One way is the clear colonial divide that was made by the White Colonialists between the French and Arab Algerians. Society was split into two parts, and one part was better than the other. In Camus’ The Stranger, the story is told from the perspective of a young white Frenchman, the colonialist side of society. In Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation however, the other side of this divide is shown. The story shows parts of Harun’s childhood, and shows the Arab side of growing up, although Harun does consider this division kind of odd: “I never felt Arab, you know. Arab-ness is like Negro-ness”, which only exists in the white man’s eyes”.[35] This of course, is true. The concept of otherness is created in relation to the desire of certain groups to conceptualize their own identity. In order to create a coherent identity, a group defines themselves by what they are, and to do so, they point to things they are not. The white Frenchman are not Arabic, and so Arabs can never form a part of the French colonial society.

            Besides this obvious difference in otherness, there is a deeper feeling of the other in both novels as well. As stated, both Harun and Meursault are alike in many ways, including the facts that they are both considered to be outsiders. Neither conformed to the accepted values of their social group, and thus the group decided to consider them as outsiders. “Race” is a “fictive ethnicity” which is created and determined by social, cultural, religious, political and legal institutions, procedures and authorities within specific contexts at different historical times.[36] Race can be considered to be a collective identity, which can be imposed on individuals and groups. This collective identity can then be used to explain an individual’s behavior and values.[37] When an individual does not conform to the normal values, such as crying at his mother’s funeral or choosing to fight for his country’s freedom, they are considered to be an enemy, one of “them”, instead of one of “us”.

            The similarities between the characters do not stop there. They are both murderers, and the murder scenes from an exact mirror opposite of each other. Two A.M. or two P.M., the influence of the sun and the heat or the moon and his mother’s thirst for revenge, an Arab or a Frenchman, convicted or set free. Both men commit a murder, but in the mirror image of the other. It is logical that Harun hates Meursault in a certain way, but this does not diminish the similarities between the two men. They are, in a way, almost the same.

Bibliography

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Camus Albert, The Stranger (New York 1989).

Carroll, David, ‘Guilt by “Race”: Injustice in Camus’s The Stranger’, Cardozo Law Review 26 (2004-2005) 2331-2343.

Daoud, Kamel, The Meursault Investigation (Croydon 2015).

Isaac, Jeffrey C., ‘Camus on trial’, Dissent 63 (2016) 145-150.

McSweeney, William E., ‘Camus and Daoud: A Brotherhood in Truth’, Quinnipiac Law Review 34 (2015-2016) 509-514.

Poser, Stephen, ‘The Unconscious Motivation to Become a Murderer in Camus’ The Stranger’ Modern Psychoanalysis 25 (2000) 259-267.

Shobeiri, Ashkan, ‘Meursault, an Absurd Happy Man’, Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences 7 (2013) 838-845.

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