SOURCE: Léger, Susan. “Camus's ‘L'Hôte’: The Lessons of an Ending.” French Literature Series 17 (1990): 87-97.

In the following essay, Léger analyzes the ending of “The Guest,” and considers several critical interpretations of that enigmatic section of the story.

For most readers of Albert Camus's “L'Hôte,” the story seems to end not with its final words, but with the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph, which brings the narrative events to a dramatic and surprising close: “Et dans cette brume légère, Daru, le coeur serré, découvrit l'Arabe qui cheminait lentement sur la route de la prison” (1623). Daru, the French schoolteacher, turns back to see that the Arab prisoner, to whom he has shown the road to freedom, has chosen instead to go on in another direction. The reader has expected, even hoped with Daru, that the Arab would head south to take refuge...