Cardozo School of Law

Palais de Justice and Poetic Justice in Albert Camus' "The Stranger"

Author(s): Ernest Simon
Source: Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 1991), pp. 111125
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/743503 .
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Ilov-

Palais

deJustice

and

Poetic Justice
in Albert
Camus'
The
Stranger
ErnestSimon

RichardWeisberg1and RichardA. Posner2address from the

view
of
of the juristthe ever-simmeringquestion of Meursault's
point
in AlbertCamus'TheStranger.Weisbergarguesthe
or
innocence
guilt
case for Meursault'sinnocence. He finds "no moral aberration"in the
protagonist of PartI (116), where Camus "builds a portraitof a man
with his own system of ... positive values,"who "partakesof the free
flow of human existence with honesty, if not perfect Cartesian
rationality."(120) He absolves Meursaultof guilt for the murderof the
Arab and speculates that "in an Americancourt, Meursault'slack of
real premeditationwould have formed the basis of a viable defense"
(121), and "he would have been convicted of manslaughter."(122)
Posner focuses on Meursault'sguilt and takes Camus to task for
"invitingthe readerto take Meursault'spartdespite his crime and lack
of remorse, by depicting him as victim rather than killer and by
depersonalizing the real victim." (89) Posner enthusiastically
endorses Rend Girard'sargument3that Camus,in his portrayalof the
trial, indulged his "contemptfor judges,"and for this purpose needed
the paradoxicalfigure of an "innocent murderer."Posner concludes:
"Thisanalysis shows how little TheStrangerhas really to do with law
and how much it has to do with a form of neoromanticism in which
criminalsare made heroes." (90)
As lawyers,Weisberg and Posner share a central interest in
the link between law in reality and law in fiction. This concern
prompts them to take the trial literally.Yet, Camus,commenting on
The Strangerin his Carnetsof 1942, warned that "Lerdalisme est un
mot vide de sens .... Je ne m'en suis pas soucid. S'il fallait donner
une forme a mon ambition, je parleraisau contrairede symbole."4
(Realism is a word devoid of meaning .... I took no account of it. If I
were to give a form to my intentions, I would, rather, speak of
symbol.) The terms by which both legal commentators assess
Meursault'sguilt or innocence are: their judgmentof the assumptions

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of the law and its representatives,the fairnessof the legal procedures,

and the values embodied in the investigating magistrate and the
prosecutor. Weisberg equates the law with "regimentation"(122),
stating that, in the eyes of society, "the protagonist'scapital offense
... is his being-against-the-law,not his act against the Arab."(122)
Posner, on the other hand, sees the trial as "a sinister farce in which
the defendant is condemned not for havingmurderedthe Arabbut for
rejectingbourgeois values."(87)
My thesis is that we can assess Meursault'sguilt and/or
innocence only if we understandhis trial not as a mimesis of legal
process, but as a metaphor for another kind of trial in which his
particularkind of guilt -- a guilt that, realistically,cannot be formally
submittedto a court of law -- is examined and evaluated.
Jean-MarieApostolides has pointed out that the French
classical theater,particularlyMoliere's comedies, "offereda space for
simulation where new behaviorswere subjected to imaginarytesting,
by trial and error."5These comedies castigate behavior that, like
avariceor philandering,is beyond the purview of the law: "Although
this behavior may flout the moral code, it is not clearly illegal."6In
TheStranger,Camususes a court to examine and judge not the actual
crime, but the kind of behavior that has traditionallybeen judged by
literature,because it escapes the law'sjurisdiction.
Camusmay have been awareof this affinitybetween his story
and Moliere's comedies. As the first court session is about to open,
Meursaultremarksabout the row of jurorsfacinghim:
Je n'ai eu qu'une impression: j'dtais devant une
banquette de tramway et tous ces voyageurs
anonymes 6piaient le nouvel arrivant pour en
apercevoirles ridicules.Je sais bien que c'dtaitune
idde niaise puisque ici ce n'dtait pas le ridicule
qu'ils cherchaient, mais le crime. Cependant la
diffdrencen'est pas grande ... (1185)
(I had only one impression: I was facing a
bench in a streetcar and all these anonymous
travelerswere scrutinizingthe new passengerto find
his ridiculous traits.I know very well that this was a
silly idea, for here it was not ridiculousness they
were looking for but criminality.Still, the difference
is not thatgreat ....)
This passage also suggests that Meursaultis about to undergo
castigation by ridicule as well as by judicial process -- a humiliation
that befalls him (1198) and some of the witnesses (Pdrez, 1190;
CUleste, 1191; Masson and Salamano, 1192) in the course of the

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proceedings. This furthersuggests that the purpose of the trial in the

structureof the novel (and according to the prosecutor'sstrategy) is
not to judge Meursaultfor the murderof the Arabbut to examine his
characterand values, to judge a man who does not cry at his mother's
funeral -- that is, to evaluate his former life and the assumptionsthat
determined its course. When viewed in this light, the murdercan be
understood as the necessary event that pulls Meursaultwithin the
orbit of the law and provokes the elaborateprocess throughwhich he
(and we the readers) can reexaminehis life.
This is not to say, as Posner does (90), that the murderis an
arbitraryand otherwise irrelevantdevice for bringing Meursaultinto
the grasp of the law. Nor is it an "accident"caused by Meursault'sloss
of "free will" (121), as Weisberg insists. The murder is itself the
consequence of Meursault'sformer life, of the choices he has made
and failed to make. It is the violent eruption of his unacknowledged
guilt. Meursaultis clearly guilty of shooting the Arab. He himself
points out to his attorneythat, as concerns his act on the beach, his
case is very simple. Not so simple and hence requiringreexamination
are the content, value, and meaning of a life whose course, as
described in Part I, has placed Meursault on that beach with
Raymond'srevolver in his hand. Thus Camusremarksin his Carnets
that "Lesens du livre tient exactement dans le paralldlismedes deux
parties." (1932) (The book's meaning resides precisely in the
parallelism between the two parts.) The trial is the occasion for
reviewing Meursault'sactions in PartI point by point and subjecting
them to detailed public scrutiny.7So far he had been able to evade
such sucrutiny,just as he had evaded the brutalityof the Africansun
by escaping into the water, until that fateful moment when the sea
solidifies and his finger tightens on the trigger "a cause du soleil"
(because of the sun).
Meursault'sunruffled existence depended on his avoidance
of public and self-scrutiny,and on his evasion of responsibility.The
director of the old-age home and Salamano act as accomplices in
helping him perpetuate the status quo. In their first interview, the
directortells him:
Vous n'avezpas a vous justifier,mon cher enfant.J'ai
lu le dossier de votre mere. Vous ne pouviez
subvenir a ses besoins. II lui fallait une garde. Vos
salaires sont modestes. Et tout compte fait, elle dtait
plus heureuse ici. (1128)
(You needn't justify yourself, my dear boy.
I've readyour mother'sfile. You couldn't provide for
all her needs. She needed a round-the-clock-nurse.

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Your salaryis modest. And,all in all, she was happier

here.)
This is at worst a lie, at best a pious exaggeration,since we
know that MadameMeursaultwas still a vigorous woman who, on her
evening walks with Pdrez,could tackle the four-kilometerround trip
from the home to the village. Salamano,too, supports Meursault's
excuses after informing him that the neighborhood had judged him
severely for putting his mother in the home: "Etl'asile, du moins, on
se fait des camarades" (and at least at the home one can make
friends), echoing the director'searlierremarks.
As witnesses at the trial, however, both the director and
Salamano, despite their good will, give damaging testimony. One
function of the trial, then, is to break down this complicity in the
illusion of innocence that Meursaulthad effortlessly obtained from
others and in turn extended to them, as when he agreed with
Raymond'sself-exoneratingassessment of his brutalityto his mistress,
"C'est elle qui m'a manqud" (she's the one who did me wrong),
echoing his 'Ce n'dtaitpas de ma faute"(It was not my fault) earlierin
PartI.
We are all each other's "copains"(buddies) and accomplices
in the claim of innocence,8 as Camus insists elsewhere as well:
Clamence, in The Fall, develops this idea of complicity and pairs it
with guilt, for only the guilty need accomplices. "Jen'ai plus d'amis,je
n'ai que des complices" (I no longer have friends, I have only
accomplices), says Clamence,describing one of the consequences of
his self-recognition.9Later,he remarks:
'
Chacunexige d'etre innocent, tout prix, meme si,
pour cela, il faut accuser le genre humain et le ciel
.... Si vous dites a un' criminel que sa faute ne tient
son caract're, mais a de
pas a sa nature ni
malheureusescirconstances,il vous en seraviolemment
reconnaissant.(1517)
(We all claim to be innocent, at any price,
even if, to this end, we have to accuse both heaven
and humankind .... If you tell a criminal that his
fault lies in neither his nature nor his character,but
in unfortunate circumstances, he'll be vehemently
gratefulto you.)
Meursault'sfriendly witnesses try to introduce the excuse Clamence
later calls "unfortunatecircumstances."The good Cdleste says "Pour
moi, c'est un malheur.Un malheur,tout le monde sait ce que c'est; ;a
vous laisse sans ddfense;" (1191) (For me, it's a misfortune. A

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misfortune, everybodyknows what that is; it leaves you defenseless).

Raymond claims that Meursault'spresence at the beach was "un
hasard"(a matterof chance).
Weisberg, in espousing the point of view of the defense,
echoes Meursault'sfriendly witnesses: "the natural environment on
the day of the murder-- coupled with the slight drunkennessfrom the
luncheon wine ... -- did in effect rob him of his free will." (121) He
insists, indeed, that Meursault'scrime stems from neither his nature
nor his character, stressing his "positive values," his honesty, his
compassion (Salamano), his loyalty (Raymond), and even his
enjoyment of everyday labor (120), thus echoing the defense
attorney'spresentation of his client as a model son, a loyal employee,
a man who is well-liked and sensitive to others' misfortunes. But
Camus dismisses this portrait as unconvincing, ineffectual, and no
more faithfulto realitythan the prosecutor'sdiatribes.Posner, on the
other hand, in his unequivocal condemnation of Meursault,espouses
the state's position to the point of writing a weighted summaryof Part
I (86-87) that parallels the prosecutor'saccount -- which we know to
be false -- and distortsMeursault'slife in precisely the same way. And
when Judge Posner opines that "a case can be made that he is a
psychopath,utterlyself-absorbedand incapable of any feeling for his
fellow-human beings
" (89), he puts himself in the untenable
....
the
of
shopkeeper of The Plague, whose reaction to a news
position
item concerning a young office worker who has killed an Arabon a
beach proposes a solution of sweeping simplicity: "Si l'on mettait
toute cette racaille en prison ... les honnetes gens pourraient
respirer"(1262). (If they put all that rabble in jail, ... decent folks
could breathe more freely.) In Camus, the ambiguity of guilt and
innocence is not so easily resolved; by ignoring the author's ironic
signposts, Weisberg takes the part of an accomplice, Posner of an
executioner.
The legal process, epitomized in the prosecutor'sspeeches,
labels Meursaultas "criminel de nature et de caractere"and hence
destroys the tacit complicity in innocence that has otherwise marked
Meursault'slife.10This labeling may be an arbitrary,unfair,and deadly
form of regimentation,as Weisberg claims; but it forces Meursaultto
look at himself in the unfamiliarand hitherto unbearable light of
culpability.That is why, when he finally does stare at his reflection in
his tin plate, he has a schizoid dxperience:
Il m'a sembld que mon image restait sdrieuse alors
que j'essayais de lui sourire. Je l'ai agitde devant
moi. J'ai souri et elle a garddle meme air sdvere et
triste. (1183)
(It seemed to me that my reflection remained

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serious even as I was tryingto smile at it. I jiggled it

before my eyes. I smiled and it kept the same stern
and sad expression.)
A moment later,however, Meursaultbecomes acutely conscious of his
situation,of the meaning of being in prison, that is, of his new identity
as a "coupable" (a guilty one), and the reflection is again faithfulto
his self. Forthe firsttime, he recognizes his voiceas his own:
Le jour finissait et c'dtaitl'heure dont je ne veux pas
parler, I'heure sans nom, oi' les bruits du soir
montaient de tous les dtages de la prison dans un
cortege de silence. Je me suis approchd de la
lucarne et, dans la derniere lumiere, j'ai contempld
une fois de plus mon image. Elle dtait toujours
sdrieuse, et quoi d'dtonnantpuisque, a ce moment,
je l'dtais aussi? Mais en meme temps, et pour la
premiere fois depuis des mois, j'ai entendu
distinctement le son de ma voix. Je l'ai reconnue
pour celle qui rdsonnaitddjia depuis de longs jours
a mes oreilles et j'ai compris que pendant tout ce
temps j'avaisparldseul. (1183)
(The day was ending and it was the hour I
don't want to speak of, the nameless hour,when the
sounds of evening rose from all levels of the prison
in a trainof silence. I went to the window and, in the
last light, I contemplatedonce more my reflection.It
was still serious, and no wonder, since, at that
moment, so was I. But at the same time, and for the
first time in months, I distinctly heard the sound of
my voice. I recognized it as the voice that had been
sounding in my ears for many long days and I
understood that during all that time I had been
speakingto myself.)
Meursault'sincreased understandingemerges only gradually
during the legal process. At its beginning, the examining magistrate,
brandishinga crucifix,exclaims: "Lescriminels qui sont venus devant
moi ont toujours pleurd devant cette image de la douleur." (The
criminals who have come before me have always wept before this
image of suffering.)11Meursaultreactswith:
J'allais rdpondre que c'dtait justement parce qu'il
s'agissaitde criminels.Maisj'ai pensd que moi aussi
j'dtais comme eux. C'dtait une idde &quoi je ne
pouvais mefaire. (1175-76, emphasisadded)

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(I was about to answer that that was precisely because they

were criminals. But then I thought that I too was like them. It was an
idea I couldn't get used to.)
He begins to accept the notion of his culpability only well into the
trial, when he senses the audience's revulsion: "J'ai senti alors
quelque chose qui soulevait la salle et, pour la premiere fois, j'ai
compris que j'dtais coupable (emphasis added). (Then I sensed
something that aroused the courtroom and, for the first time, I
understood that I was guilty.) Thus the trial serves both to apply to
Meursault from without the label of culpability, and to induce him to
accept and internalize it as part of his altered identity. Yet Meursault
does not discard his former identity. He remains attached to the
supposedly carefree, natural creature whose speech was silence,
whose season was eternal summer, and whose playground was the
beach; otherwise, his speech of self-justification to the priest at the
end of the novel would be empty and meaningless. But he now begins
to understand that his former identity was incomplete, inadequate.
Caligula, looking into his mirror an the end of Camus' play
(the second version of which is contemporary with the novel)
exclaims: "ma libertd n'est pas la bonne" (my freedom is not the right
one); Meursault, looking into his tin plate, might say to himself: "My
innocence was not the right one; my happiness was not the good
one." His kind of innocence, based as it was on the treacherous
equilibrium of neutrality, and his kind of happiness, founded
primarily on sensual enjoyment, were terribly fragile. He recognizes
this in a flash, without yet a clear, detailed understanding, when he
says after firing the fifth shot, "J'ai compris que j'avais d6truit
l'dquilibre du jour, le silence exceptionnel d'une plage ou j'avais dtd
heureux. (I understood that I had destroyed the balance of the day,
the exceptional silence of a beach where I had been happy.) Through
his trial, understood as a testing of his identity, Meursault, this man
with half a name, is brought to understand that his former life of
uninvolvement on the beach was indeed exceptional, and that in
trying to experience only the pleasant side of life (l'endroit) while
avoiding the negative side (l'envers), he was living only half a life
with half an identity.12
To my knowledge, no critic has accorded much prominence
to the theme of identity in Part II; and that is curious, when we
consider that in The Misunderstanding (the play Camus wrote in 194143) Jan is killed because he concealed his identity.13Yet, Camus marks
the two crucial events of Meursault's new life (his initial incarceration
and the start of the trial) with the question of his identity. Part II
begins:

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Tout de suite aprns mon arrestation, j'ai dtd interrogd

plusieurs fois. Mais il s'agissait d'interrogatoires
d'identitd qui n'ont pas durd longtemps. (1171)
(Right after my arrest, I was interrogated
several times. But it was about my identity, and the
session didn't last long.)
And at the start of the first court session:
On m'a encore fait d6cliner mon identitd, et malgrd
mon agacement, j'ai pensd qu'au fond c'dtait assez
naturel, parce qu'il serait trop grave de juger un
homme pour un autre. (1187)
(They asked me once again to state my
identity, and despite my irritation, I thought that it
was natural enough because it would be a serious
thing indeed to judge one man for another.)
The irony of that remark lies in the fact that this court is indeed going
to judge one man for another: it is going to judge and condemn the
man who fired the four shots that did not kill for the man who fired
the first shot that did kill. Both the investigating magistrate and the
prosecutor emphasize those four shots. The magistrate asks repeatedly:
"Pourquoi avez vous tird sur un corps a terre? Pourquoi? II faut que
vous me le disiez. Pourquoi?
(Why did you fire on a fallen body? Why?You must tell me. Why?)
And the prosecutor concludes his analysis of the accused's
premeditation with this triumphant flourish, as reported by Meursault:
Et "pour etre sOr que la besogne dtait bien faite,"
'
coup
j'avais tird encore quatre balles, posament,
sur, d'une fagon rdfldchie en quelque sorte. (1196)
(And "to make sure that the job was welldone," I had fired another four rounds, calmly, at
point-blank range, in a well considered way so to
speak.)
This emphasis on the four shots is a major element in the
miscarriage of justice that most commentators have felt and that both
Weisberg and Posner, in their opposite ways, place at the center of
their discussions. But it is a miscarriage of legal justice only; for it is
perfect poetic justice. The Meursault who fired the four shots could
not have fired the first; yet the Meursault who fired the four shots
could not have come into being without the other, and only the
second Meursault could understand, assume responsibility, and

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meaningfullyundergojudgmentfor the guilt of the first.

The first Meursault is still there, however, the one who can
say, "Et meme, dans un sens, cela m'intdressait de voir un proces. Je
n'en avais jamais eu l'occasion dans ma vie." (And, in a sense, it would
even be interesting to see a trial. I had never in my life had the
opportunity.) This is the uninvolved observer who watches the
passing human scene with acuity and mild amusement. But there is
now in Meursault another observer who observes the first -- a
psychological reflexivity that becomes characteristic over the course of
Part II. Camus immediately objectifies this new psychological situation
through the enigmatic figure of the young reporter, about whom
Meursault reflects:
Dans son visage un peu asymdtrique je ne voyais que
ses deux yeux tris clairs, qui m'examinaient
attentivement sans rien exprimer qui fOtd6finissable.

Et j'ai eu l'impressionbizarre d'etere regarddpar

moi meme. (1186, emphasisadded)
(In his slightly asymmetricalface I saw only
his two very bright eyes, which scrutinized me
intentlywithout any definable expression.And I had
the odd impressionof being watchedby myself.)
The reporter as observer and recorder,
epitomizes the role Meursaulttypically assumed in
Part I, as when he spent Sundayafternoons on his
balcony, overlooking the human scene below. The
reporterthus embodies the complex of attitudesthat
most fully defines the natureof Meursault'sguilt: his
placing himself above the human drama -- his
characteras dtrangerin the sense of outsider, his
attitude of neutralityintended to relieve him of the
burden of making difficult choices, his strategy of
non-responsibility, as when he says about Marie's
proposal of marriage,"c'dtaitelle qui le demandait
et moi je me contentais de dire oui." (She's the one
who was asking; as for me, I merely said yes.) The
man who failed to establish his full identity feels
robbed of his individualitywhen his own attorney
uses the first person, "disant 'Je' chaque fois qu'il
parlait de moi," (saying "I" each time he spoke
about me.) When questioned about this odd
practice, the policeman replies, "Tous les avocats
font ca."(All lawyersdo that.)
Indeed! Meursault,playing the role of advocate for Raymondwhen

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writing the letter to his mistress, must have written "Je"many times.
So Camus applies poetic justice with ruthless specificity. Both parts
begin with incarceration;Meursaulthad put his mother in an old age
home, and at the beginning of Part II he is put in prison. He had
alwaysavoided others'questions:
Je ne voulais pas ddjeuner chez Cdleste comme
d'habitude parce que, certainement, ils m'auraient
posd des questions et je n'aimepas cela. (1139)
(I didn't want to have lunch at Cdleste's as
usual because they would certainly have asked me
questions, and I don't like that.)
Now as part of the legal procedures he is subjected to relentless
questioning.
Camusimposes poetic justice on Meursaultprimarilythrough
the medium of the prosecutor'sargument,which finds consequence
and value in actions that Meursaulthad deliberately left arbitraryand
insignificant. The law's strategy thus finds an interpretive void, a
requirement of some explanation for Meursault'slife, and the law is
quite ready to provide its own authoritativeview. The refusalto view
the mother'sbody,'4the cafd-au-lait,the cigarettes,the Fernandelfilm,
the affairwith Marie,the letter for Raymond,and the false deposition
on his behalf -- all these acts, which Meursault had dismissed
implicitlyor explicitlywith "cela ne veut rien dire"(that doesn't mean
anything) the prosecutor now organizes into a structure of
connections, meanings, and values. We and Meursaultknow these to
be outrageously false, but Meursault,in the absence of any such
structureof his own making, is forced to accept them as "plausible."
The prosecutor manages to assign to his victim the fundamental
identityof criminal.
Camus'message is clear: in the perspective of a realitybereft
of meaning (the absurd), you cannot choose, and you cannot judge.
You are innocent because no one can judge you; but your personal
and human identities are forged out of choices and judgments,and if
you do not assume the responsibility of makingthem, someone else
will make them for you, and you will be found guilty. Out of such
dilemmas is built the tragedyof the humancondition.
This ethical paradox is clearly illustrated by Meursault's
response to his lawyer'squestion concerninghis love for his mother:
"Sans doute, j'aimais bien maman, mais cela ne
voulait rien dire. Tous les etres sains avaientplus ou
moins souhaitd la mort de ceux qu'ils aimaient."
(1172)15

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(Certainly, I did love mama, but that didn't

mean anything.All healthy beings had more or less
desired the death of those they loved.)
The statement illustratesthe wrong side and the right side of things
and points to the deeper meaning of "thatdoesn't mean anything."In
the original Meursault'sphilosophy, opposites cancel each other,
leaving nothing; but it is precisely because all aspects of life contain
their opposites that anguished judgmentis necessary,so thatthe good
can be chosen and separated from the bad. Meursaultcould have
chosen to live his love for his mother and let the hatredlie dormant.
Camus, through the trial, makes him bear the responsibility for the
choice he did not make. Nearinghis execution, Meursaultaccepts this
responsibility; in his last outburst, he asks for a hatred fully
compatiblewith his guilt.
The legal condemnation to death cannot be his sole
punishment,for in the face of death we are all equally "privileged."As
both Weisberg and Posner point out, however, Camus does offer a
recognizable account of a trial in a Frenchcourt as well as a caricature
of it. He goes into considerable detail in depicting its conventions and
procedures;he dwells on the behavior of the participants,the cordial
atmosphere in the courtroom,where habitudsgreet each other as in a
club, the formalityand mechanical regularityof the procedure, the
inflation of language perpetrated by both the prosecutor and the
defense attorney,the sarcasmsof the presidingjudge, the browbeating
of the witnesses and the misleading truthfulnessof their testimonies,
culminatingin Marie'stearfulprotest: "On la forgaita dire le contraire
de ce qu'elle pensait." (1192) (They forced her to say the opposite of
what she was thinking.)
Camus imposes such painstaking detail in order to subject
law itself to poetic justice. That is why Camus, departing from the
classical model of Molibre,brings the world of the law into his novel,
its formal and practical manifestations, its social and political
assumptions,its representativesand procedures-- law as a whole must
also be subjected to the light of philosophic scrutiny,under which its
pretenses, deficiencies, and arrogantcomplacencies will be revealed.
In a world where any potential judgment -- particularly moral
judgment -- is tinged with ambiguity,no person, no institution,can be
entirely innocent. Camusputs the law, too, on trial, by virtue of the
same principle that turns Clamence, the anti-hero of The Fall into a
"judge-penitent."
If the law is deemed incapable of resolving the ambiguities
of the human situation and inadequate to the task of judgment,this
does not mean that Meursaultmust be innocent -- as Weisberginsists;
nor does it mean that Camus romanticizes the criminal -- as Posner
would have it. Meursault,like Tarrouin ThePlague, has abdicatedthe

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burdensome responsibilities of choice and made himself vulnerable

to both external judgment-- the court'sverdict -- and the judgmentof
that other self whose unsmiling visage he sees reflected in his tin
plate.16Yet the law must also be imaged in a critical mirror.And
Meursault'ssituation and personality are well suited to the job of
destroying its pretense. A spectatorat his own trial, distanced by his
estrangementfrom the society the court represents,he can look upon
the tragi-comedyof the courtroomlike a modern Candideor Ingdnu,
sometimes with wide-eyed astonishmentand amusement, sometimes
with a caustic, conscious irony that is more the author'sthan his own.
Meursault'saccount of the prosecutor'ssummationis particularlyrich
in examples of this strategy:
Moi j'dcoutais et j'entendais qu'on me jugeait
intelligent. Maisje ne comprenaispas bien comment
les qualitds d'un homme ordinaire pouvaient
devenir des charges dcrasantescontre un coupable.
(1196)
(I was listening and I was hearing that I was
being judged intelligent. But I didn't quite understand how an ordinaryman'squalities could become
crushingchargesagainsta culprit.)
Et j'ai essayd d'dcouter encore parce que le
procureurs'est mis a parlerde mon ame.
11disait qu'il s'dtaitpenchd sur elle et qu'il
n'avaitrien trouvd,messieurs les jurds.II disait qu'a
la vdrit6 je n'en avait point, d'ame, et que rien
d'humain, et pas un des principes moraux qui
gardent le coeur des hommes ne m'dtaitaccessible.
(1197)
(And I tried to listen some more because the
prosecutorstartedto talkabout my soul.
He was saying that he had looked at it closely
and that he had found nothing, gentlemen of the
jury.He was sayingthat in truthI didn't have one -- a
soul, and that nothing human, and not one of the
moral principles that stand guard over the hearts of
men was accessible to me.)
(Note that in this last passage, the surprisingswitch from indirect to
direct discourse within the same sentence underscoresand casts into
doubt Meursault'ssupposed naivetd.)These are only two examples of
a whole series of ironic-ingenuous remarks culminating in a final
comment that capturesthe essential traitsof Meursault'ssituationand
personality:

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Je n'ai pas regardddu cotd de Marie.Je n'en ai pas eu

le temps parce que le prdsident m'a dit dans une
forme bizarre que j'auraisla tete tranchdesur une
place publique au nom du peuple frangais.(1201)
(I didn't glance in Marie'sdirection. I didn't
have time for that because the presiding judge told
me in an odd phrasing that my head would be cut
off in a public square in the name of the French
people.)
The mention of Marierecalls his innocent sensuality; the notice he
takes of the judge's "odd phrasing"expresses his ingenuousness and
his estrangement as well as his ironic perspective on the court; the
spelling out of the penalty evokes his new identity as culprit and
anticipateshis new consciousness of mortality.
Manycommentators,includingPosner(88), have underscored
the "unrealistic"harshness of this sentence -- especially in a colonial
setting,17when self-defense provided a very plausible argument.That
Meursault's attorney hardly alludes to self-defense is another
implausibility, one so glaring that Camus must have intended it.
Camus'portrayalof the trial cannot be taken as a realistic account of
legal process in a French colonial court any more than his hero's
apocalypticexperience during his ten-minutewalk on the beach after
a Frenchluncheon in a setting of banal domesticity can be taken as a
realistic portrayalof the hostility of nature.We see here not a frontal
assault on the law, but a critique of judgmentitself, which reaches its
climax in the prosecutor's summation. Weisberg has quite rightly
pointed out that in Continental jurisprudence "as depicted by
European novelists" the investigating magistrate "duplicates the
methods and the creative deeds of the novelist ... Thus, in both the
inquisitorand the novelist, acuityof perception serves to uncoverand
to record realityin its fullness." (47) But it remainsfor the prosecutor
(and the defense attorney) to organize that reality into a structureof
meanings. What invalidates the prosecutor's interpretation of
Meursault'sreality is not its wrongness, for it does fulfill a prime
requirement of both legal and literary discourse: it is "plausible."
What invalidatesit is its ease, its rhetoricalglibness, its blindness to
ambiguities,and its exclusion of any feeling for the accused.These are
literarymore than judicialfailures.
In Molibre's plays, aberrations threatening to society but
immune to the law are exposed and satirized; in Camus' novel
aberrationsdamaging to humanitybut normally immune to the law
are prosecuted in a court of law so that the law itself can be exposed
and satirized. For the law, in its mechanical application of judgment
and its simplistic distinction between guilt and innocence, does

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violence to human solidarity by separatinghuman beings into two

mutually exclusive categories (Weisberg's "regimentation"). The
novel itself thus becomes the privileged space where both Meursault's
life and the persons and institutionsthat would judge that life can be
subjected to scrutiny and ultimately, perhaps, to the reader's
judgment.18
1. The Failure of the Word: The Protagonist as Lawyer in Modern Fiction (New Haven:

Yale UniversityPress,1984). All subsequentreferencesto this workwill be indicatedby

page numbersset in parenthesesin the text.
2. Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press,

1988). All subsequent references to this work will be given by parentheticalpage

referencein the text.
3. Rent Girard,"Camus'StrangerRetried,"79 PMLA,
319 (1964).
4. Albert Camus, Thdatre,Rdcits,Nouvelles, (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), p. 1933. All
subsequent referencesto Camus'worksare to this volume andwill be given in the text.
All translationsareby the author.
5. "Moliereand the Sociologyof Exchange,"14 CriticalInquiry477 (1988).
6. Id.,at 491.
7. SeeBrianT. Fitch, TheNarcissisticText(Toronto:U. of TorontoPress,1982), ch. 4, for
a detailed discussion of the text's "reflexivity"and the reader'srole in fulfilling its
intentions. Fitch argues that Part I functions as a trap that ensnares the reader into
adoptingthe point of view of the prosecutor.This is what Posnerhas done. Fitchfurther
suggests that PartII may function as a trap that ensnares the readerinto rejectingthe
point of view of the prosecutorand sympathizingexclusivelywith the accused.Thatis
whatWeisberghas done.
8. It is high time to point out thatthe word innocence, in both Frenchand English,has
at least two meanings:ingenuousness and freedom from guilt. The two meaningsare
related;but the distinctionis important.Meursaultloses his illusion of the second kind
of innocence on the beach; but, as we shall see, be brings some of the firstkind with
him into the courtroom.
9. I was alertedto this parallelbetween Clamenceand Meursaultby MarilynK.Yalomin
"AlbertCamusand the Mythof the Trial,"25 ModernLanguageQuarterly434 (1964).
Yalom also points to the natureof Meursault'sguilt when she remarks:"Themedieval
sin of neutrality-- a lack of commitmentto good or to evil -- is renderedinto modern
terms as a crime of complicity,whose uncertainmoral status is mirroredin the gray
Dutch landscape."Id. at 488.
10. Again, The Fall develops this theme more explicitly. Clamence imagines a moral
universewhere people would be labeled by sign-boardson their houses, which would
advertise their moral condition -- as would their calling cards: "...

nous serion forces

de revenirsur nous-memes .... Oui, I'enferdoit etre ainsi:des rues a enseignes et pas
moyen de s'expliquer.On est class6 une fois pour toutes" (1499). (... we'd be forced
to reflect upon ourselves.... Yes, hell must be like that:streetswith sign-boardsand
no way to explain yourself. You are stamped once and for all.") Meursaultand his
friendlywitnesses find no way to explainthemselvesat his trial.
11. Thatan examiningmagistratewould, in the course of carryingout his officialduties,

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indulge in such a personal and passionate outburstis highly improbable,to say the
least. So much for realism!But, see the alternativeexplanationof Weisbergsupranote 1,
ch. 3.
12. I allude to the essential meaning of the title of Camus'first collection of essays,
L'Envers et l'endroit (The Wrong Side and the Right Side), written in 1935-36 and

published in Algiersin 1937,justbefore he startedworkon TheStranger.

13. Note thatthe experience of the image in the tin plate takesplace justafterMeursault
relates the story of the Czechoslovakian,which summarizes the plot of The
Misunderstanding.

14. But seeWeisberg,supra,note 1, pp. 121-22,for a convincingcase thatMeursaultwas

at first eager to view his mother's body and later declined for very understandable
reasons.
15. Critics"friendly"to Meursaultare fond of quoting this statementabout his mother
as evidence of his honesty. Indeed, it is startlinglyhonest; and clearly,Camussets it in
contrastto conventionalhypocrisy,here representedby the lawyer.But honesty does
not guaranteeinnocence;and hypocrisydoes invoke realvalues.
16. In ThePlague,this double vulnerabilityis expressedin Tarrou'ssuccumbingto both
forms of the disease: the bubonic (external, social) and the pulmonary(internal,
private).
17. Posner,supra note 2, p. 88: "Acolonial Frenchcourtwould not have been so eager
to convictand sentence to death a Frenchmanaccusedof murderinga 'native.'"
18. Camusthus emphasizesthe partof Frenchcriminalprocedurethatadmitscharacter
evidence. Weisberg's argument that Meursaultwould not have been convicted of
murderin an Americancourt (supra, note 1, pp. 121-122)and Posner'sstatementto the
contrary (supra, note 2, pp. 88-89) with his demonstration that Camus faithfully
portrayedactual Frenchprocedure,are irrelevantin the literaryperspective of poetic
justice.

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