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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Each new narrative work arrives not unannounced, but comes laden with echoes from the literary tradition. For already occupying deserved spaces in the estate of world literature are narrative texts which, in broad terms, are either tragic or comic. Although fictional, the novel—a subtype of narrative—comprises a real world with its nexus of relationships: a language, characters and incidents. Not only does this interconnectivity lay bare the organic structure of the work (its textuality and originality), it prompts thought. To study a novel means to dissect, or rather, in Derridean terms, deconstruct the concatenation of incidents found within the narrative text, all in an effort to grasp the movement of thought. This is so because literature, as a symbolic form, to borrow Paul Ricoeur’s expression, “gives rise to thought” (Conflict of Interpretations 299). Hence a close reading results in what Martin Heidegger has called ‘unconcealment.’ The Heideggerian word is his translation of the Greek aletheia (Poetry, Language, Thought 36). The disclosure of beings, one in particular, constitutes the concern of this research. The being in question is that of a hero, Meursault, the tragic hero of Camus’s magnum opus. There exist, as always, questions concerning the identity of a tragic hero, inquiry into his being and individuality as he suffers constraint. The peculiarity of a tragic hero’s predicament gives rise to this study.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Literature is “an inexhaustible source of new critical discoveries” (Northrop Frye 17). As a kind of art, it never comes into being ex nihilo. Many a thing goes into it, namely human experiences, historical accounts, myths, bits from the literary tradition and so forth. Nonetheless, the closing reading of an individual work of art is not to be done in relation to any of the above, save for the world of literature. Furthermore the literary tradition echoes mythology unceasingly, and vice versa. Two Greek gods, Apollo and Dionysus, constitute the guiding principles of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the underlying will to power. The latter is considered the first tragic hero.

Achilles of The Iliad, for instance, is a Dionysiac mask; in fact “all the famous figures of the

Greek stage, Prometheus, Oedipus, etc are merely masks of that original hero, Dionysos” (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy 51). This deity embodies the “erring, striving, suffering individual” (Nietzsche 52). Thus an understanding of this Dionysiac condition provides new insights into the being, or nature, of the tragic hero of The Stranger. The abovementioned condition is made manifest—or possible even—by an opposing force: the Apolline.

The struggle between the external elements of the Apolline and the Dionysiac stirrings bring about the tragic hero’s predicament. Not only does the tragic hero, Meursault, fall under the high mimetic mode, he is of the divine form. Nothing has been done concerning the probability of the ‘more-than-man’ factor working in Meursault. In consequence, this research takes up the task in order to gain an understanding of the tragic hero, a character regarded as fremd (strange).

1.3 Objectives of the Study

The main aim of this research is to examine the hero of Albert Camus’s The Stranger. The following questions serve as a guide in the achievement of the objectives of this research:

1. What informs Meursault’s actions and consciousness?

2. Is he really very different from other characters; if so, why?

3. Why does he seem indifferent to his predicament?

4. Is he an innocent or guilty victim of his predicament, or both?

To provide substantial answers for these research questions, the study shows how the combined forces of the Dionysiac and the Apolline constitute the constraint that informs the tragic hero’s actions and inaction. It brings to the fore the consciousness and struggle of Meursault, that is, his whole being as it experiences the tragic situation: Apollonian/Dionysian predicament. The onus is on this literary investigation to study accordingly the being of the tragic hero in relation to those of other characters, which Amechi Akwanya calls “people of the book” (Verbal Structures 136). The tragic hero is “the subject of a chain of actions, making a series, in its turn a constituent within the structure” (Akwanya 144).