SOURCE: Hurley, D. F. “Looking for the Arab: Reading the Readings of Camus's ‘The Guest’.” Studies in Short Fiction 30, no. 1 (winter 1993): 79-93.

In the following essay, Hurley reviews several interpretations of “The Guest” and argues that contrary to prevailing critical opinion, there is textual evidence that points to the innocence of the Arab prisoner in the story.

Albert Camus is no longer quite the cultural hero in the Western world that he was both before and, for a time, after his death, but at least one of his stories seems to have achieved a kind of canonical permanence, if 35 years of constant anthologizing constitutes canonical permanence. “The Guest,” Camus's story of a French-Algerian schoolmaster's unwilling involvement in the transportation of an Arab accused of killing, perhaps deserves special scrutiny now, 30 years after the French-Algerian tragedy played itself out, because the Western powers—this time led by the United...