The Misunderstanding
The
Misunderstanding (French: Le Malentendu),
sometimes published as Cross Purpose, is a play written in 1943 in
occupied France by Albert Camus.
It focuses on Camus’ idea of The
Absurd.
A
man who has been living overseas for many years returns home to find his sister
and widowed mother are making a living by taking in lodgers and murdering them.
Since neither his sister nor his mother recognize him, he becomes a lodger
himself without revealing his identity.
Plot summary
Act
1: The reception hall of a small boarding house, noon
Martha
and her Mother, together with a taciturn Old Man, run a guest-house in which
they murder rich solitary travellers. Martha wants to get enough money to go
and live by the sea. Mother is exhausted by killing.
Jan
returns to the house he left 20 years ago. He has heard his father was dead and
has returned with money for his mother. He expected to be welcomed as the
prodigal son, but his mother does not recognise him. His wife Maria says a
normal person would simply introduce himself, but Jan intends to observe his
family from the outside and find what they really need to make them happy.
Maria reluctantly agrees to leave him there for one night.
Jan
registers under a false name. Martha is cold and refuses to answer personal
questions. Mother fails to respond when Jan hints at his purpose in coming and
asks if she had a son, but she begs Martha not to kill him.
Act
2: The bedroom, evening
Martha
warms slightly towards Jan, but when he becomes interested in her she rejects
the shared moment and determines to kill him. She brings him a drugged cup of tea.
Mother tries to retrieve the tea but is too late. Jan tries to express his
feelings to her, but Mother replies impersonally. When Jan falls asleep, Martha
takes his money and they prepare to throw him in the river.
Act
3: The reception hall, morning
In
the morning, Martha is happy but Mother just feels tired. The Old Man finds
Jan’s dropped passport and they realise without emotion what they have done.
Mother decides to drown herself, disregarding Martha’s protests. Martha is left
alone with her anger.
Maria
arrives, looking for her husband. Martha first says he has left, but then
admits they drugged and drowned him for his money, saying it was “a slight
misunderstanding” that led her to kill her own brother. Maria is distraught.
Martha coldly compares it to her own loss of her mother. Then realising she is
alone she decides to kill herself. She tells Maria to pray God turns her to
stone or kill herself too, then leaves the house. Maria prays for mercy and the
Old Man appears. Maria asks for help but he bluntly refuses.
Origin
Camus
wrote Le Malentendu in 1942 and 1943 in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in Nazi-occupied France. Originally the play was to have
been entitled Budejovice after the city České Budějovice
in Czechoslovakia
where Camus stayed briefly during a European trip with his first wife in 1936.
The
play “is a highly subjective presentation by Camus of the human condition as he
saw it in the desperate circumstances of 1942-43”. It reflects several aspects
of Camus’s life: he had left Algeria, to which he was deeply attached, leaving
his second wife and friends behind; he was depressed with tuberculosis; as well
as living under threat of execution as a propaganda agent of the French
Resistance. Camus once described Le Malentendu
as “the play that resembles me the most”.
The
plot of Le Malentendu resembles the newspaper article that the
protagonist of Camus' 1942 novel The Stranger finds under his mattress in his prison cell: it is the
story of a man who became rich abroad and comes home to his village where his
sister and mother have a hotel. He doesn't reveal his identity (in order to
surprise them later), and books a room as a guest. Because he is wealthy, his
mother and sister murder him while he is asleep.
The
plot is also an ironic reversal of the classical theme of the recognition of
the brother, from the ancient Greek Electra plays and the New Testament story of the Prodigal
Son.
Style
Le
Malentendu “is austere in its plot and
characterization and claustrophobic in mood”.
Camus
“deliberately contrived an effect of polished, articulate, non-colloquial
discourse”, as in a classical tragedy. Through the necessity of writing while
under occupation, “the play is cloaked in metaphor, trailing a train of
symbols, with Camus styling the drama with all the inevitability of a Greek
tragedy. In the Greek style, each character
gives the argument for his or her actions, whether for good or ill. Thus Camus
is able to air his thoughts on innocence, grief, guilt, betrayal, punishment,
integrity, and silence, wrapping all these in what is essentially an
existential debate. Although Camus' arguments come thick and fast, the play
moves at a deliberate pace as it develops into more of a treatise than an
organic drama".
“It
is the most poetic of all the works Camus wrote for the stage, but one cannot
claim that speech and situation always match perfectly”.
The
characters “unwittingly express ambiguities that escape their awareness”, and
indirectly express philosophical ideas. Le Malentendu is “so heavily
laden with ambiguities and multiple levels of meaning that it borders on
caricature, a fact that may explain its relative failure as a tragedy”.
Themes
Camus’s
theme is “the sauveur manqué, a savior who fails because of his
inability to speak a clear language to those he would save”.
Le
Malentendu “depicts the destruction of a
family fatally incapable of communicating with each other”. Jan does not heed
his wife Maria when she advises him to introduce himself plainly. His sister
Martha accepts nothing but impersonal communication. Mother is too weary to
respond to Jan’s hints.
The
play contrasts the love between Jan and his wife with the absence of love from
his sister and mother. Mother’s suicide when she realises her crime deprives
Martha of the maternal love she also needs. Maria’s wish for divine love is
also denied.
“One
of the most important themes is the impossibility of attaining happiness”.
Despite the success of his marriage, Jan cannot be happy in exile, but wishes
to return to his family and be happy together. Martha also longs to be somewhere
else, and Mother longs for peace, but these desires are only met in death.
The
misunderstandings and lack of comprehension that thwart these desires
illustrate Camus’ philosophy of the Absurd. These difficulties create the drama
– Jan’s choice to conceal his identity, Martha’s insistence on impersonal
conventions, her misinterpretation of his determination to stay, Maria’s
bewildered response to her cold confession, and the Old Man’s indifference.
When
Camus revised the play in 1958, he added or modified four very short incidents
to transform the indifference of the Old Man into something more sinister. For
example, he distracts Martha when she is about to check Jan’s passport. Camus
aimed to “intensify the effect of unrelieved metaphysical blackness,
culminating in the very last crushing syllable of the play: ‘Non!””.
The
play expresses an antipathy to religion, but also a strong concern with
religious ideas, including the parable of the prodigal son. “Camus had never
cut himself off from conversation with Christian thinkers but stood in a
relation of tension to Christianity”.
The
return of Jan from happiness in Africa to a murderous home, and the yearning of
Martha to be in the sun, reflect an antithesis between Northern Europe and the
Mediterranean, which informs all of Camus’ work.
It
is interesting that very similar theme is treated by a Macedonian playwright
Risto Krle in his play Money is Murder (Парите се отепувачка)
written in 1938.
Philosophy
"The
vision is bleak, with Camus' absurdist creed summed up by one of his
characters: 'This world we live in doesn't make sense'"
Le
Malentendu “focused on Camus’ idea of the
absurd. The core of this idea is that human desire is in perpetual conflict
with a world that is arbitrary, illogical and unfair. A central theme of this
play is that life does not distinguish between those who pursue a ‘bad’ path
and those who pursue a ‘good’ path. Life, as Camus sees it, is equally cruel to
the innocent and the criminal; this is the absurdity of existence”
“In
The Myth of Sysiphus, Camus defines 'The Absurd' … as the feeling of
being radically divorced from the world and thus a stranger to both others and
oneself. The sense of constantly living in a state of exile produces a profound
skepticism or distrust in the myths and universal systems of belief, which are
alleged to give meaning and purpose to existence but in fact devalue and even
negate it”
“Although
seen by a number of critics as a bleak piece of work, Camus did not regard Le
Malentendu as pessimistic. He said: ‘When the tragedy is done, it would be
incorrect to think that this play argues for submission to fate. On the
contrary, it is a play of revolt, perhaps even containing a moral of
sincerity’” It implies that everything would have worked out all right if Jan
had done what his wife begged him to do, or if Martha had responded to Jan’s
personal questions or Mother had remembered when asked about her son. The
family is destroyed through “failing to realise that values are not dreamed up
in isolation but discovered communally”.
“Camus
himself remarked that he considered the play to have been a failure for the
simple reason that everybody he met kept asking him what he meant. If they
needed to ask, he argued, then the play itself was not clear, and he had not
been successful as a playwright”.
Performance history
Le
Malentendu was staged for the first time at
the Théâtre de Mathurins in Paris on 24 August 1944, directed by Marcel
Herrand, who also played the part of Jan and with Maria Casarès as Martha. The
performance coincided with the Liberation of Paris.
The play had two short runs, neither particularly successful. It was the first
of Camus' plays to be performed, although Caligula had been written two
years earlier.
“The
French public were ill-prepared in 1945 to appreciate such multi-faceted
allegories and such philosophical implications in the absence of rational
cogency and psychological realism. In a word, the play was felt to be lacking
in logic. Its tragic tone, its refinement, its poetic presentation were no
compensation to the audience which insisted – particularly in those days – on
clarity of statement and precision of thought”.
In
2012, a production of Cross Purpose, was performed in English at the King's Head Theatre,
London. Produced by AM Media Productions, Jamie Birkett starred as Martha with
Christina Thornton as Mother, David Lomax as Jan, Melissanthi Mahut as Maria
and Leonard Fenton
as the Old Man. The production was revived in 2013 with Paddy Navin as Mother
and Kemi-Bo Jacobs as Maria. It was directed by Stephen Whitson with set design by Jenny Gamble, costume design by Ilona
Russell, sound design by Tim Adnitt and lighting design by Phil Hunter.
References
· Williams, Christopher. The
Misunderstanding and Caligula: two plays by Albert Camus, translated by
Christopher Williams. Knocklofty Press, Tasmania, 2007.
· · Freeman, E. The
Theatre of Albert Camus: A Critical Study. Methuen, London, 1971
· · Petersen, C. Albert
Camus, Frederick Ungar, New York, 1969
· · Hopkins, P. “Camus’s
Failed Savior: Le Malentendu”, Rocky Mountain Review of Language and
Literature, vol 39, no 4 (1985), pp251-256
·
Marie, C.P. “A Re-examination of Form and Meaning in Camus' Le
Malentendu”, Nottingham French Studies, vol 17(1978), pp60-73.
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