A re-examination of ‘form and meaning’ in Camus’ Le Malentendu

Abstract

It would be legitimate to argue that the interpretations of Le Malentendu which I have read seemed to be somehow unrealistic and that perhaps a re-evaluation was needed. “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”, wrote Philip Thody. The play seemed therefore open to various interpretations. The second point that attracted me was that, according to one of his critics, “Camus had never cut himself off from conversation with Christian thinkers but stood in a relation of tension to Christianity”.