Meursault's Dinner with Raymond: A Christian Theme in Albert Camus's L'Étranger:

As most readers of Albert Camus's masterpiece, L'Etranger [The Stranger] are aware, Camus conceived his protagonist Meursault as a type of Christ figure. In his famous introduction to the 1955 American University edition, he wrote, "[this is] the story of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth ... I had tried to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve." Noting the irony in equating Jesus and Meursault, he reiterated, "I have sometimes said, and always paradoxically, that I have tried to portray in this character [Meursault] the only Christ we deserved. ... I said this without any intention of blasphemy and only with the slightly ironic affection which an artist has the right to feel toward the character whom he has created ("Preface" 337)." An expert in Biblical exegesis, at the time of writing L'Etranger Camus was steeped in early Christian thought. He completed his doctoral dissertation (diplome d'etudes superieures) in philosophy at the University of Algiers, a study of the neo-Platonist thinker Plotinus and his influence on St. Augustine titled, "Neoplatonism et pensee chretienne" in 1936, at age twenty-three (Lottman 91-92, 109). Obviously, he did not draw comparisons between Jesus and Meursault lightly. At first glance, Meursault bears scant resemblance to Jesus for the average reader. Although Camus evidently conceived of him as a Jesus persona, not many scholars have tried to decipher Camus's meaning. By contrast, numerous critics emphasize how Camus's writing in general combines "humanism" and a strongly religious temperament. They conceive him longing for a God of love, a fraternal but absent Jesus. For example, John Cruickshank, observing that Camus was denounced more often during his lifetime as anti-Marxist than anti-Christian, argues that he sensed the "appetite for divinity" in human beings. For that reason, he rejected blatantly atheistic or anti-religious positions (314-15). As Cruickshank observes, "What makes Camus so significant, and in many ways representative, a figure of his own generation is the fact that he experienced a religious need in its widest sense yet was unable to accept religious belief" (324). The eulogistic religious philosopher James W. Woelfel concludes that Camus was an "agnostic." Nevertheless, several critics have emphasized the "religious" or "Christian" aspect of L'Etranger. In a significant early comparison of the styles of Voltaire and Camus, Patrick Henry observes, "The only Christ that we deserve," as Camus enigmatically and ironically referred to his hero, is offered up as a tribal sacrificial victim, not to placate the whims of a revered god, but to insure the validity of the social structure. Both Christ and Meursault epitomize the scapegoat issue, for neither of them is killed for content but for form, the maintenance of the form or structure upon which society is fabricated. Neither attempts to save his life, for each knows that, by doing so, he would lose the validity of that life, its authenticity and its redeeming quality that are only sustained if they are maintained to the end. (162) Reiterated by many other critics, Henry's standard interpretation echoes Camus's 1955 avant-propos to L'Etranger. In an assessment similar to Henry's, Eamon Maher's often-overlooked brief analysis of Meursault's Christ-like characteristics chafes at Camus's analogy to Christ. Attempting to mitigate the force of Camus's statement, the devout Maher observes, "He is careful not to say that Meursault is a modern Christ which would be blasphemous, as he is about as far removed from the lofty position as you could get" (276). Maher interprets Camus's avantpropos thusly, "We didn't deserve the real Jesus Christ; maybe Meursault is a more fitting model for us" (277). At the same time, Maher supports Camus's denunciation of a hypocritical society that, living by "appearances" is outraged by Meursault's "brutal honesty" and is less repulsed by Nazi genocide and atrocities than by Meursault's failure to weep at his mother's funeral. …