SOURCE: Ellison, David R. “Summer and Exile and the Kingdom.” In Understanding Albert Camus, pp. 194-99. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.

In the following excerpt, Ellison contends that the ultimate lesson of “The Guest” is “that, in some circumstances, the refusal to choose is already a choice.”

As was the case in “The Adulterous Woman” and in “The Renegade,” the fourth story of the collection “The Guest” takes place in a secluded area of Algeria, far from the cities, their order and their laws. The narrative centers on a man named Daru, a schoolmaster from France who teaches the indigenous children of this mountainous region the rudiments of the French language and culture. Although no specific dates are given, it is evident that the story takes place during the early stages of the Algerian conflict, when the native population had begun to organize itself against the repression...