In the following excerpt, Perrine gives an overview of Camus' "The Guest" and discusses common misinterpretations of the story.

When I entered the classroom that morning, I was just in time to catch the class wag writing some "clumsily chalked up words" on the blackboard: "You have handed us a difficult assignment. You will pay for this." She was absolutely right. When I read the papers my students had written defining the theme of Camus' short story "The Guest," I found that, though they had sped their arrows bravely, none, in my opinion, had nicked the center of the target. The assignment was more difficult than I had anticipated. I paid by having to write lengthy notes in margins. Yet they were bright students, a selected group, not the usual cross-section of mediocrity. Although there were scattered unique mistakes (e.g. Daru is an Arab schoolmaster), the...