The Misunderstanding

In his essay “The Decay of Lying,” Oscar Wilde criticizes plays that favor naturalistic dialogue and characterization over the formal, archetypal style of classical myth and tragedy, arguing that it reduces the artistic effect. Camus agonized over devising a new language of tragedy for his plays that would evoke the timelessness Wilde praised. What literary elements define Camus’s style in The Misunderstanding, and how do these elements contribute to his construction of tragedy?

The Misunderstanding sits between Camus’s first cycle of works focused on the absurd and his second focused on rebellion. Choose a work from his first cycle (The Myth of Sisyphus, The Stranger, Caligula) and compare its central character to Jan. How does Meursault’s attitude toward the absurd differ from Jan’s? How does Caligula’s sense of morality compare to how Jan regards others? How does Jan embody characteristics of Camus’s Sisyphus?

Compare Camus’s development of his idea of Existential Rebellion and Renunciation of the Absolute in Martha to his development of it in his 1947 novel The Plague. What unexpected similarities does Martha share with those who rebel against the plague, an allegory for German occupation of France in World War II?

How does the archetypal nature of the characters contribute to the tragic effect of the play? Does Camus succeed in creating a modern, timeless tragedy? If so, what elements of characterization does he use to effect this? If not, where does his characterization fall short?

Compare and contrast the cosmology of The Misunderstanding with the cosmology of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex or Antigone. How does the difference in world order affect how the reader perceives the justness of the protagonists’ actions?

The motif of peace and quiet appears throughout the play. What does this motif symbolize, and how does Camus use it to underscore his thematic exploration of Self-Determination, Fate, and the Search for Meaning in an Absurd World?

The Misunderstanding resounds with biblical allusion, but it also alludes to the Pagan myth of Sisyphus. Pick a character from the play and analyze how their arc compares to Sisyphus’s story, focusing on their motives and the nature of their respective worlds.

The characters often serve more as mouthpieces of Camus’s philosophical ideas than as representations of people. Is this similar to the abstracted quality of characters in classical tragedy, or does The Misunderstanding represent a different style of work?