The Misunderstanding

The seaside symbolizes the illusory hope for total happiness and freedom from the world’s constraints, the latter of which are represented by the claustrophobic setting of Central Europe. Jan describes—and Martha envisions—the seaside as an idyll of warmth and sun, boundless horizons, few people, endless flowers, and eternal spring and summer. However, the seaside is never a setting in the play. It exists only as a memory (to Jan and Maria) and as a fantasy (to Martha)—absent, inaccessible, existing only in their minds. This physical nonexistence indicates the unattainability of unassailable happiness and absolute meaning, emphasizing Camus’s thematic exploration of Self-Determination, Fate, and the Search for Meaning in an Absurd World.

Martha’s motive for committing the murder-robberies is to accumulate enough money to escape to the seaside, which she envisions as the panacea to her lifelong misery in the shadows of landlocked Central Europe. Following the revelation of Jan’s true identity—which kills her dream—Martha describes what she had hoped to find: “Out there, where you can escape, can be delivered, can roll in the waves and press your body against another’s, out on that land defended by the sea, the gods dare not set foot” (217).