The Guest

A short, husky Frenchman born and raised in a treacherously rugged and dry rural area of French colonial Algeria, Daru is a schoolmaster living alone in a rural hillside schoolhouse serving some 20 students. Surrounded by abject poverty and living “almost like a monk” in his one inelegant room attached to the classroom (66), the story’s protagonist nevertheless feels privileged in this inhospitable land of his upbringing, this place of belonging: “Everywhere else, he felt exiled” (66).

Ever compassionate, Daru regularly distributes food from stocks provided by the administration to surrounding villagers left hungry because of an eight-month drought. Similarly, Daru demonstrates kindheartedness towards the Arab prisoner delivered to him, not only in refusing to keep him bound by a rope—as the gendarme Balducci would have it—but also in preparing food and drink that he consumes alongside him in a gesture of equality. Resolute in his principles based on free will, Daru directly defies Balducci’s orders to deliver the Arab—accused of murder—to authorities in a nearby town. Though repulsed by the prisoner’s putative crime, he nonetheless offers the latter a stash of food, money, and a path to freedom because “to hand him over was contrary to honor” (72). Upon discovering that the Arab has rejected this option, Daru, puzzled by the man’s lack of agency and anxious because of the threat awaiting him on the chalkboard, feels vulnerable, despairing, and isolated.