YEAR 12 ENGLISH ADVANCED: WEEKS 7 & 8

WEEK 7 Monday Lesson 1: Craft of Writing Task

Lesson 2: 2020 HSC Sample Response.
Chapter summaries given last lesson
New information?
Allocated students to present
On Mod A areas of interest determined
last week.
Tuesday Two lessons:
TASK 1: ENDING OF CAMUS’ TEXT WHAT IS YOUR READING OF THE
END OF DAOUD’S NARRATIVE?
As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with
signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like
myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For
everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large
crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
As opposed to earlier in the novel, when Meursault was passively content at best, here
Meursault finds that he is actively happy once he opens himself to the reality of human
existence. Meursault finds that he is also happy with his position in society. He does not
mind being a loathed criminal. He only wishes for companionship, “to feel less alone.” He
accepts that this companionship will take the form of an angry mob on his execution day. He
sees his impending execution as the “consummation” of his new understanding.

It is interesting that Meursault refuses "to play the game" by

seeing the chaplain, confessing his sins, and asking for prayers and
consolation. Yet he allows his imagination to play a game with
chance and possibility. At the same time, he keeps, with effort,
some control on his thoughts, for he knows that his execution is
probably inevitable. But is there an alternative? Perhaps he can
appeal, successfully. He sustains himself by thinking, constantly
thinking: if he is able to maintain control over his thoughts, he can
gain some semblance of peace of mind.

But his peace of mind, even if achieved, is brief. His thoughts return
too quickly to a familiar groove — to Marie — and he considers her
feelings about being labelled the mistress of a man who murdered
another man; she is the mistress of a man who is sentenced to die.
He wonders about her. She is alive now. If she were to die, her
memories of Meursault die also. And, if she is dead, and once
Meursault is dead, he will be absolutely forgotten. No trace of him
will remain, even in a memory.

When the prison chaplain walks in, unannounced, Meursault's shock

is evident. He has been caught off guard: he has been caught
thinking. One senses that Meursault has been surprised when he is
naked; he is vulnerable, for normally he clothes himself in
indifference, passivity, or physical activity.

Meursault describes the chaplain's behaviour as an attempt to be

friendly, and he describes the chaplain himself as a mild, amiable
man. Knowing that the chaplain has not come to offer last words,
the quiet within the cell allows Meursault to drift outside himself,
observing the chaplain's eyes, his knees, and his sinewy hands.
Meursault is a master at this kind of observation, admitting that for
a while he almost forgets that the chaplain is there, a live human
being, sitting on Meursault's bed. Like the examining magistrate,
the chaplain cannot accept Meursault's statement that God does
not exist; he has come to Meursault's cell to assure him that his
doubts about God are too certain and, therefore, might be wrong.
When he questions Meursault about a belief being too thorough and
the possibility that the reverse is true, Meursault answers that the
chaplain may be right, but, most of all, Meursault is sure that he
is not interested in discussing God.

The chaplain is unwilling to accept Meursault's lack of spiritual

interest, saying that Meursault's feelings are fostered because of
desperation, which, we realize, is most unlikely. Meursault feels
fear, not desperation; in fact, he lacks the time to even begin a
discussion about God because any discussion of God would involve
sin and guilt, and, although Meursault has been pronounced guilty,
he emphatically does not accept that guilt. He also refuses to be
consoled with the chaplain's observation that "all men are under a
sentence of death." Meursault has already considered this notion
himself and it is futile to philosophize about "death" and "all men."
Meursault is undaunted by the chaplain's standing suddenly and
sternly staring him in the eyes; it is, he says, a trick he himself has
played.

Meursault drifts away as the chaplain laments about the suffering of

a man who does not believe in an afterlife; he is roused only when
the chaplain becomes so agitated that he professes a belief in the
possibility that Meursault's appeal will succeed. Meursault is
convinced that he has not sinned: a man of God has no business in
his cell. He committed a criminal offense, not a sin, and God's laws
should have no dimension in civil matters. He may be guilty of a civil
offense, but he is not guilty of sinning. Meursault is incapable of
imagining the face of God on the stone walls, as the chaplain
suggests. He wants only to conjure, before him, Marie's face, "sun-
gold, lit up with desire."

Like the examining magistrate, the formerly "mild, amiable" man is

metamorphosed into a madman, swinging around and crying out in
defiance against Meursault's staunch refusal to believe in an
afterlife.

In contrast, Meursault is calm and bored; of course he knows that

one might wish, perhaps at times, for an afterlife, but such wishes
are a waste of time. Humanity cannot change death's being an
eternal void.

Meursault's request that the chaplain leave is not granted. The man
is determined to squeeze out of Meursault some piece of his
humanity that must be spiritual — which, in a sense, he does
manage to accomplish. Meursault's imagination can picture an
afterlife, but only an afterlife in which he can remember this life on
earth. For Meursault, a spiritual existence is absolutely impossible
unless it consists of a mind, residing in eternity, and doing one
thing: remembering the pleasure of a man's former, physical life.
Meursault has no use for any spiritual "present" moments in a
vaporous spiritual world. Meursault is an active, physical man, and
the constant memory of such things as swimming and sex is the
only kind of an afterlife possible for him.

When the chaplain begins to pray, Meursault is transformed into a

madman himself, yelling, hurling insults, and grabbing the chaplain
by the neck band of his cassock. He is desperate; he has precious
few moments left to him and yet he is still being punished, even
now, by a man who wants to be called Father and who wants to
pray for his "son." Meursault describes his joy and rage as he
attacks the certainty of the chaplain's beliefs; none of this man's
spiritual certainties is comparable to a physical strand of a woman's
hair. The only certainty important at this moment is the surety of
Meursault's pending death, and his mind reels as his hands tighten
on the chaplain.

Afterward, in the calm of the night, Meursault is able to fall asleep,

until just before daybreak; then he is flooded by smells and sounds,
physical responses during what he fears might be his last moments
on earth. The sound of a steamer reminds him of his anonymity; not
a single person on the boat knows or cares about Meursault's fate,
and it is at that moment that he understands the odd behaviour of
his mother as she approached death. She succumbed to a game of
sorts, playing as though she were young once more, delighting in
the interest that Old Pérez offered to her. Pérez cared.

Meursault realizes that his mother rebelled against dying. She

"played" at beginning again. Likewise, so will Meursault. He is
emptied of all hope. And he is free. He can face the universe, alone
— without fearing any man or any god. The "benign indifference" of
the universe is no threat to him. He is, at last, able to defy
everything and everybody because he has gained the knowledge
that his indifference is akin to that of the universe. He is not to be
pitied because he is a victim of a prejudiced jury. He has
determined his own value to himself and, in addition, has realized an
entirely new sense of self value: he knows how deeply his
indifference and disbelief disturb society. One must "play the game"
if he is to live within society. But in order to do this, one must give
up being absolutely true to himself and acting according to his
conscience. Society cannot afford to harbor strangers or outsiders
who live by other rules. Society demands obedience. Meursault
cannot be subservient to the emotional mores of the Algerian
masses. Meursault's truth is his only companion, and he will die,
defending his right not to cry at his mother's funeral and his
right not to profess a belief in God. What good is it to attempt tears
or swear beliefs in the name of truth when they would be
melodramatically fraudulent?

Meursault has confronted the absurdity of his life and of life itself. In
Part One, he lived without pausing to consider the meaning of his
present moments, his past, or his future. He was either satisfied, or
content, or bored. He placed no emphasis on his life's significance.
Now, he realizes that the universe and most of the world are
indifferent to his fate. So, he will play the game of the Absurd; he
himself will live as long as he can, giving his life his meaning, even
though he knows that ultimately, it has no meaning. He will watch
and measure his life's meaning as he faces what he hopes to be a
howling mob. If he is so hated and such a threat to that mob of
people, he will be able to laugh at their fear of him. He does not fear
their hatred. He can determine the extent of his importance by
measuring how thoroughly he is a threat to them. Meursault can
imagine dying, enjoying the absurdity of his rejection. The crowd
that howls for his blood are not free; they have not been forced to
question their existence. They are governed and bound by secular
and sacred laws that Meursault will not accept. He realizes that
nothing — no value — is lasting or eternal. His former indifference
was mute; now he can articulate and justify his new indifference
and, with this insight, attain ecstatic peace.

WHAT IDEAS ARE YOU GOING TO USE

FROM THIS READING?
Of note- the Courtroom in Part 2- microcosm of society- attempt to
find rationality in an irrational world

The Irrationality of the Universe – no God-nihilism – motif of crucifix-an

attempt Christianity conceives of a rational order for the universe based on God’s creation and
direction of the world, and it invests human life with higher metaphysical meaning.

Consider:
The Meaninglessness of Human Life- Absurdism-irrationality of existence-
purposeless
The Impact of the Physical World -observation,
Consider the significance of the dog
Sexual activity
Motifs:
Sun, heat, death, crucifix,
HAVE YOU READ CLOSELY THE NOTES GIVEN
AT THE START OF THIS UNIT ON EACH
CHAPTER OF CAMUS’TEXT? CHECK PART 2.
YOUR TURN:
 HOW DO YOU SEE THE ENDING OF DAOUD’S TEXT?
 IDENTIFY IMPORTANT IDEAS AND NOTE SIMILARITIES AND
DIFFERENCES TO THOSE OF CAMUS.
WEEK 8 -YOUR CONTRIBUTION!! WHAT IN THE SUMMARY DO YOU
MAKE A CONNECTION WITH?

TASK 2:
WORK THROUGH THIS READING CAREFULLY- HIGHLIGHT IDEAS YOU
CAN EXPRESS AND DEVELOP IN YOUR OWN WORDS
Despite the various criticisms of Camus apparent in Harun’s narrative, there is good
evidence to suggest that Daoud’s own philosophy and politics are much closer to
Camus’s than it might appear, at least as Daoud understands him. Harun is highly
critical of Meursault’s world: “Your Meursault doesn’t describe a world in his book,
he describes the end of a world.” The description Harun offers of this “end of a
world” is rather peculiar — there is no property, marriage becomes unnecessary,
weddings are useless, people hold sick dogs and are incapable of sustained,
meaningful speech. Nonetheless one gets the point: Harun does not go for the type of
existential indifference Meursault embodies in the early parts of the book. Ironically,
Harun is an isolated, lonely bachelor who cannot tolerate love, which he considers
little more that “ritual, habit, and dubious bonding.” Admittedly much of this
attitude was caused in him by events beyond his control — his brother’s death and
his mother’s stifling response to it. Yet even his mature view of life is extremely bleak
— “we are born alone and will die separate.”
¤
In The Meursault Investigation, Harun, the murdered man’s brother and the book’s
narrator, offers an account in which the narrative of The Stranger is taken as
describing real historical events whose character, meaning, and consequences he
both disputes and attempts to explain more faithfully. And the reworking of the story
does not stop there. Harun also assumes that the murderer — Meursault, not Camus
— wrote The Stranger as a firsthand account of those events. Indeed, Harun removes
Camus entirely from the equation by claiming that this same Meursault went on to
write many books and to become a famous French author.

Since the publication of The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger there has been a
habit among commentators to identify Camus with his characters and to interpret
the philosophical orientations he examines in his essays — the absurd, rebellion — as
his own. Against this habit Camus himself protested. “The idea that every writer
necessarily writes about himself and depicts himself in his books is one of the most
puerile notions that we have inherited from romanticism. It is by no means
impossible — quite the opposite — that a writer should be interested first and
foremost in other people, or in his time, or in well-known myths.” In The Meursault
Investigation, too, this identification is an interpretative choice, there is a partial
explanation that is apparent in Harun’s critique of Meursault in the early pages of the
novel. Meursault refers to Musa, Harun’s brother, only ever as “the Arab,” depriving
him of a voice and, indeed, of any real existence. In The Stranger Camus erases Musa
from history, and with him all Arabs, by refusing to give him a name. Daoud returns
the favour by writing a book in which Camus, the famous French author, is erased
from history by assigning authorship of his books to one of his fictional characters.
Of course, The Meursault Investigation is about much more than this type of petty,
literary revenge. But perhaps it is not about less than this either.

At first glance the structure of The Meursault Investigation seems straightforward. It

is a mirror image of The Stranger. The first encounter of Harun -he is stifling in the
shadow of his brother’s murder and his mother’s overwhelming grief, so much so
that he feels himself a “dead man.” This contrasts with Meursault, who, despite the
death of his mother (a fact Harun disputes), is rather enjoying himself when we first
encounter him in The Stranger. Midway through The Meursault Investigation, as
in The Stranger, an event occurs that changes dramatically the course of the
protagonist’s life: Meursault kills an Arab, Musa, Harun’s brother, and is tried for
murder and then sentenced to death; Harun kills a Frenchman,
a roumi (stranger), Joseph Larquais, and is exonerated. Though Harun later comes
to resent his acquittal, his initial response to his crime is so jubilant that his judge’s
accommodation seems positively prosaic by comparison. Whereas Meursault says his
shooting of the Arab was like “four short raps on the door of unhappiness,” Harun
says that his murder of Joseph Larquais was “like two sharp raps on the door of
deliverance.” In the immediate aftermath of the crime both Harun and his mother
experience a kind of liberation in which the old and destructive patterns of their lives
are suspended long enough for a few genuine acts of kindness and understanding.

Read in this way The Meursault Investigation is a critique of the colonial regime and
its literature. By the time of the Liberation, the French had been ruthlessly exploiting
the Arab and Berber populations of Algeria for over 130 years. That exploitation is
represented in the book by the destruction of Harun’s family through the murder of
his brother by a bored and indifferent pied noir. Harun, the surviving son, along with
his mother, undertakes to learn details of the murder and to receive some form of
redress — a declaration of Musa as a “martyr” and a corresponding pension for his
mother. All of it to no avail, until one evening in 1962 just after the Liberation, when
Harun (the colonized) shoots and kills a Frenchman (the colonizer) found hiding in
the garden of the home that he and his mother had occupied after the departure of its
French owners. The liberating quality of that act, apparent in Harun’s description of
it as “deliverance,” is consistent with Fanon’s statement of the therapeutic nature of
anti-colonial violence. “At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the
colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude.”[3] So
justified is this violence for Fanon that it is no longer perceived as a violation. Harun
says something very similar: though his act was as unprovoked and senseless as
Meursault’s, whom he refers to as a “murderer” throughout, it “was not a murder but
a restitution.”

This critique of the colonial regime applies equally to colonial literature. Though
Harun never refers to Camus by name, only to Meursault, the technique is not
disinterested. Just as the colonials’ households and lands became the property of the
Arabs and Berbers following the Liberation, Harun claims that so too do the
murderer’s words and expressions — his books — become “my unclaimed goods.” As
for the critique itself, Harun says Meursault’s silence about Musa’s corpse is a
denial of a shockingly violent kind, don’t you think? As soon as the shot is fired, the
murderer turns around, heading for a mystery he considers worthier of interest than
the Arab’s life […] As for my brother Zujj, he’s discreetly removed from the scene and
deposited I don’t know where. Neither seen nor known, only killed.

This critique of French colonialism generally and of Camus’s literary version of it

particularly is at least part of the meaning of The Meursault Investigation.

¤
Though the anti-colonialism narrative is one of the book’s meanings, it is not its only
meaning or even its most important one. Though never abandoned entirely, it is
called into question and qualified by a series of more profound insights into Harun
and Algeria’s situation that emerge in the narrative.

This type of insight is apparent in The Meursault Investigation in a number of

different ways. First, Harun’s interpretation of Meursault is not univocal but
polyphonic. Sometimes Meursault is just another colonial whose indifference serves
as an image of French rule in Algeria. In such cases Harun interprets Meursault’s
crime as unmotivated and his language as beautiful but empty in order better to
depict the gratuitous violence of colonialism and the manner in which it hides the
ugliness of that violence with elevated but empty speech. Meursault’s language is
“perfect prose […] capable of giving air facets like diamonds.” Yet all of this merely
obscures the fact that Musa was killed “by a Frenchman who just didn’t know what to
do with his day and with the rest of the world, which he carried on his back.” Well
and good. But later on Harun asserts that Meursault had a reason for killing his
brother and that the language with which he describes the act is not obfuscating at all
but illuminating of a new reality he has discovered:

Musa wanted to save the girl’s honor by teaching your hero a lesson, and he
protected himself by shooting my brother in cold blood on a beach. […]

Harun’s assessment of post-Liberation Algeria changes over the course of the novel.
Initially consistent with the narrative of decolonization and highly critical of the
French — “Who, me? Nostalgic for French Algeria? No! You haven’t understood a
word I’ve said” — Harun also offers an extremely damning critique of the post-
Liberation regime: rampant religious dogmatism and fanaticism in comparison with
which Meursault’s French Catholics seem very small beer; rapacious exploitation of
the country’s resources comparable to that of any colonial regime; and a judiciary so
corrupt that Meursault’s trial appears as a model of legality and due process by
comparison. By the time Harun finishes the critique, one wonders whether he might
be a little nostalgic about the French after all.
The third type of insight is not an insight but rather a manner of playing with facts
that suggests a more complex way of understanding the events they purport to
describe. Sometimes this playing with facts produces ambiguities or lacunae in the
narrative; at other times it produces facts that flatly contradict one another. As to the
former, Harun reveals to us early on that the body of his brother was never actually
found and that he is therefore officially a “missing person.” This is a rather
significant piece of information. If there is no body, then how do we know that he
was murdered? And more important, why would Harun and his mother assume that
he was and that Meursault was the one who did it? Is the entire story a fabrication
designed by Harun to satisfy his mother’s desire for an explanation of Musa’s
disappearance? This too is a plausible explanation, because at one point Harun tells
us that his early accounts of Musa’s murder were complete fabrications that he
merely pretended were in some way related to the two newspaper clippings (about a
murder?) that his illiterate mother kept between her breasts.

That led to a strange book, a counter-investigation. I crammed everything I could

between the lines of those two brief newspaper items, I swelled their volume until I
made them a cosmos. And so Mama got a complete imaginary reconstruction of the
crime, including the colour of the sky, the circumstances, the words exchanged
between the victim and his murderer, the atmosphere in the courtroom, the
policemen’s theories, the cunning of the pimp and the other witnesses, the lawyers’
pleas ...Well, I can talk about it like that now, but at the time it was an incredibly
disordered jumble, a kind of Thousand and One Nights of lies and infamy.

As to the contradictions, two examples will suffice to indicate the technique.

Frequently in the story Meursault is described as having gone on, after the trial, to
become a famous French writer (31, 43, 105). Yet Harun also tells us that he was
executed for his crime in 1942 immediately following his conviction (44, 112). There
are also anachronisms in the account. We know that Harun does not learn about
Meursault’s book until 1962, 20 years after it was written (39). Yet, as he walks the
streets of Algiers with mother as a youth in search of evidence regarding the
disappearance of his brother, his mother cries out for revenge on the various
witnesses in The Stranger who speak in defence of Meursault at the trial —
Raymond, Salamano, Céleste — whom she denigrates with unflattering nicknames
(34). How could either of them know these names?

The contradictions, ambiguities, and anachronisms evident in The Meursault

Investigation challenge the reader to puzzle over their meanings and to discover the
manner in which they together illuminate the work as a whole. This is a challenge
indeed, determining the identity of Harun’s interlocutor. Who is this “Mr.
Investigator,” this French youth who comes to Oran, decades after the fact, to learn
of Meursault’s Arab victim? Is Harun in fact talking to anyone, or is The Meursault
Investigation a cleverly disguised monologue. Why does he talk only to himself, if
indeed that is what he is doing? And who is the ghost in the bar with the cigarette
and newspaper clippings that hovers around the table? Camus?

Harun tells his interlocutor that Meursault did not attend his mother’s funeral. He
adds rhetorically, “Do you realize what it would mean if I could prove what I’m
telling you, if I could prove your hero wasn’t even present at his mother’s funeral?”
No matter how long one ponders this question it seems impossible to know what to
make of it.

Any book as obviously complex and contradictory as The Meursault Investigation is

so intentionally. How can we explain this?

Near the centre of the book, Harun warns his interlocutor that the clues he/she seeks
regarding the murder of Musa cannot be found through “any geographical
searching.” In other words, don’t look for the bodies, whether in cemeteries or on
beaches. They aren’t there. But why? Because as Harun tells us, “This story takes
place somewhere in someone’s head, in mine and in yours and in the heads of people
like you. In a sort of beyond.” What can this mean?

Given the sheer multiplicity of plausible interpretations it may be that the book is a
nod in the direction of post-modern indeterminacy. That makes some sense,
particularly given Harun’s denunciation of absolute or totalizing movements. Like
Camus, he considers such movements to be nihilistic because they deny the world.
Post-modernism’s denial of a reality other than or beyond the text bears a family
resemblance to such movements, though not in its political and emotional climate.
Post-modernism is playful, whereas totalitarianism is serious and humourless. While
that playfulness may not provide adequate intellectual or political grounds for
resisting nihilists who are not playful, it is certainly more salutary for human life and
can often be experienced as liberating given totalitarianism’s stifling insistence on
meaning. Daoud’s book confounds the facts and critiques those who insist on them
too earnestly, in order to encourage us to see the extent to which all facts are
somehow “in someone’s head.”

Immediately following the above assertion, Harun tells his interlocutor, “You will get
a better grasp on my version of the facts if you accept the idea that this story is like an
origin myth.” What myth? The story of “Cain and Abel.” The way Harun unpacks the
myth is to say that Cain is Meursault, but also in a broader sense the French, who
come to dispossess Abel (the Arabs) of his home. But as we have seen, these roles
reverse once there is a shift in power. Then the Arabs become Cain in their turn,
ousting the Berbers and French from their homeland in the Arabs’ own rapacious
desire for conquest. But this is not all. Later, after his murder of Joseph Larquais,
Harun returns to the myth once again, but this time to explain that it is not merely an
“origin myth” but a teleological one too: “No, I’m not drunk, I’m dreaming about a
trial, but they’re all dead already, and I was the last to kill. The story of Cain and
Abel, but at the end of mankind, not at the start” (my emphasis).

This is a very bleak account. This is perhaps why Harun tells his interlocutor that his
“isn’t a trite story of forgiveness or revenge.” In this context forgiveness and revenge
are considered trite because they both presume that things can be different. But
Harun’s account denies this. The violent struggle for supremacy is our beginning and
our end. It is nature. That is why Harun declares that his story is “a curse” and “a
trap.” The sequence of events he describes may look like “restitution” or
“deliverance” — even if only the eye-for-an-eye version of these things. But the
narrative makes it clear that the situation is even worse than this. The world is
doomed to repeat this sequence eternally, as it were. It is a curse. But the story is also
a “trap.” How so?

Harun is cynical and duplicitous in the recounting of his tale, his real motives never
fully clear.. His tale, too, is a “trap,” but it is a trap that Camus wants the reader to
understand and to escape if possible. This is also true of The Meursault
Investigation, though what one is escaping and to where is unclear in the book.

TASK 3: CHECK THE DOUBLES AND OPPOSITIONS IDEAS

https://publications.essex.ac.uk/esj/article/id/84/
Challenges
ARTICLE 1 – WHAT IDEAS CAN YOU USE HERE?
https://papers.iafor.org/wp-content/uploads/papers/
iicahdubai2017/IICAHDubai2017_33294.pdf
ARTICLE 2 – IDEAS?
https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:802922/
datastream/PDF/view
ARTICLE 3 – IDEAS ?
https://www.academia.edu/47491872/
The_Absurdity_of_the_Aftermath_in_Daouds_Meursault_contre_e
nqu%C3%AAte

ARTICLE 4- IDEAS?

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/kamel-daoud-
chroniques-algeria-book-review/
ARTICLE 5 – IDEAS ?
https://bulla.univ-saida.dz/admin/opac_css/doc_num.php?
explnum_id=2064
ARTICLE 6- IDEAS ?
https://historyaschoice.wordpress.com/2016/01/30/strangers-in-
an-estranged-land-a-reexamination-of-the-stranger-and-review-of-
the-meursault-investigation/

FOLLOW UP AFTER THE ASSESSMENT :

DRAFT A MEETING BETWEEN MEURSAULT AND HARUN.
IMAGINATIVE MODULE C TASK. CONSIDER CHARACTERS, EVENTS,
CONTEXT, IDEAS.