SOURCE: Beer, Jill. “Le regard: Face to Face in Albert Camus's ‘L'Hôte’.” French Studies 56, no. 2 (April 2002): 179-92.

In the following essay, Beer explores the dynamics of Balducci's and Daru's relationship with the Arab prisoner in “The Guest,” maintaining that Camus is somewhat successful in “dismantling the frontiers which demarcate human relationships, blurring the boundaries between Self and Other and so creating a space where ethical encounter with alterity is possible.”

Although Camus's short story ‘L'Hôte’ has attracted much attention, the critical gaze has rarely focused on the significance of the regard, the notion of seeing and being seen, which appears to pattern the narrative, to direct and dictate the multiple encounters which take place through the course of this relatively short text.¹ Much has been made of the narrative's postcolonial currents, the status of the Arab, the story's significance poised as it is on the eve...