The Misunderstanding

Throughout Camus’s work, he utilizes biblical allusion to nuance and reinforce his key arguments. In The Misunderstanding, Camus includes biblical motifs of exile, salvation, and resurrection, all of which he resituates to an absurd cosmos to illustrate the danger of a desire for clear meaning and salvation.

Camus chooses symbolic names for Martha and Maria, invoking the sisters Martha and Mary, who appear in the biblical gospels of Luke and John. The contrast between the sisters teaches the importance of faith over worldly concerns. In the biblical accounts, when Jesus visits Martha and Mary’s house, Mary does nothing but listen to him, leaving Martha to do the housework. When Martha complains, Jesus chides her for focusing on her many tasks instead of on God. Mary exemplifies the importance of faith and listening, while Martha exemplifies the foolishness of worldly concerns.

Camus’s most overt biblical allusion in The Misunderstanding is to The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) with Jan himself referencing this parable twice. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is part of a trio of parables emphasizing the importance of repentance over righteousness. As Jesus says in The Parable of the Lost Sheep, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15: 7, NRSV). In The Parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus illustrates this lesson through the departure and return of the younger son of a man with two sons. With his share of his inheritance (prematurely granted by his father), the Prodigal Son moves to a distant land and squanders his money on immoral living. Destitute, he repents for sinning against both God and his father and resolves to return home to beg his father to allow him to return as a slave. However, when the Prodigal Son returns, his father rejoices, and before the son can propose his servitude, the father orders him to be dressed in festive clothes for an extravagant feast. The elder son, the epitome of the righteous person, is indignant: He has toiled obediently for his father through the years of his brother’s absence, yet his father never honored him in such a way. Like the final lines of the other two parables, the father’s response in Luke 15:32 prioritizes repentance and salvation over righteousness: “‘We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found’” (NRSV). In The Misunderstanding, Martha feels this same indignance over her mother celebrating Jan’s love over her own, even though, like the elder son, she stayed faithful to her mother during her brother’s absence.

Jan expects his return to be the return of the Prodigal Son: He longs to be welcomed immediately and effusively without having to identify himself. Instead, he’s met with oblivious indifference and, in Martha, enmity. He perpetuates his estrangement by refusing to identify himself, fixated as he is on his return having the neat structure and clear answers of parable. In a darkly ironic twist, Jan’s obstinate desire for this clarity of meaning leads to the opposite outcome: an absurd murder that exposes the order of the world as cosmic indifference, not divine grace.

In Act II, Scene 5, Jan’s toast to the Prodigal’s feast before he drinks the cup of drugged tea alludes also to the biblical motif of the fateful, fatal cup. In the Book of Mark, Jesus asks two of his disciples, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (10: 38, NRSV). The cup symbolizes the suffering that must be endured to attain martyrdom, and baptism symbolizes death. The symbolic cup appears again when the crucifixion is imminent. In Mark 14: 36, Jesus beseeches God to spare his life: “Remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want” (NRSV).

Act II, Scene 5, ironizes these biblical scenes, stripping them of divine significance and casting them in the harsh light of the absurd. As Jesus does, Jan hesitates to drink from the cup. However, Jan hesitates because he realizes the folly of his plan, not because he realizes the cup’s true meaning. In contrast, Jesus hesitates because he knows the cup means death. However, he ultimately defers to God (“yet, not what I want, but what you want”), knowing that if he must drink, there is a divine reason for his death. Both Jesus and Jan beseech God for help: Jesus for the strength to honor God and face death, and Jan for the conviction to return to Maria. Each is a prayer for salvation: Jesus prays for salvation in life after death through faith in God, and Jan prays for salvation in life itself through his return to Maria’s love. Jan, however, doesn’t enjoy the safety of divine providence that Jesus does: Martha has already decided his death, his foolish plan having provoked her to do so.