With his pieces Caligula and The Malentendu, Camus used the technique of dramaturgy to

emphasize the ideas of the Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger once again. The subject is very
simple: a son is killed by his mother and sister because he cannot find the right words (suitable)
and the right time to say what he is ... But the piece, even if it is accessible, it is not so simple. We
cannot know if tomorrow we will be killed or if we will live again ... This is the pessimistic vision
of the play. For those who kill, even crime is loneliness. They begin to kill with an instinctive
gesture, the mother in the present being tired of so many murders because neither in life nor in
death is there a homeland or peace. Marthe had waited all her life for the wave that could make
her happy and she rebels against her destiny that forces her to live alone and without the love she
wants and awaits. She feels hatred for her brother who knew all that was to know: he was married,
he was rich and happy and his life was sunny, by the sea. For Martha this life is an injustice Martha
has a powerful negative force; she is a nihilist until the end; she's fighting for justice and she's able
to kill to get what she wants stubbornly.
The misunderstanding occurs when Jan does not have the power to speak. He makes the
same mistake as Meursault: silence leads to death; to be silent is to commit a misunderstanding.
Martha refuses to believe in an egoistic god who had chosen for him the truest happiness and which
leaves men to suffer and to enjoy miserable happiness. Marthe is jealous and feels the injustice of
her destiny - too heavy. She agrees to be alone, until the end, because the pain and the injustice
have their climax, acute, when make the man resign himself, not to be helped any more, nor to
accept the help in any form. She says no to her sin - crime, feeling liberated and happy; she hates
this world where all turn to the god; she does not want to look at the sky or when she will die, to
say a prayer. To Martha, that nothing prevents to say what she feels and what she thinks. She is
free and this freedom is dangerous. She has no limits. His revolt is stronger than the human
conventions and the respect ... Marthe, by her nihilism, has a frightful cruelty. There are three
women: a mother, a sister and a mistress ... The women have a very strange concern but with well-
founded reasons. They kill a rich stranger and this for the last time. Both: the mother and the
daughter represent the nihilism in flesh and bone; they are those that manifest the need to escape
from this claustrophobic horizon. Martha seeks the light of the soul, when she speaks of the sun
and the clouds (which represent her anger, selfishness, sadness, cynicism and the lack of love).
The sea Martha loves is also a character.
ARTENE ELIZA-MIHAELA, CLUBUL COPIILOR „SPIRU HARET”, BÂRLAD, ROMANIA,
COORDINATOR OF THE THEATRE CERCLE