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The ending of this story is most puzzling. Has the protagonist due to fate been able to fulfill a promise he owed? What does the title mean in relation to the story?
The settings and telling of this story are very lush. I especially loved this part:
Quote:
The night was full of fresh aromatic scents. Above the forest the few stars in the austral sky, blurred by an invisible haze, were shining dimly. The humid air was heavy. Yet it seemed delightfully cool on coming out of the hut. D'Arrast climbed the slippery slope, staggering like a drunken man in the potholes. The forest, near by, rumbled slightly. The sound of the river increased. The whole continent was emerging from the night, and loathing overcame D'Arrast. It seemed to him that he would have liked to spew forth this whole country, the melancholy of its vast expanses, the glaucous light of its forests, and the nocturnal lapping of its big deserted rivers. This land was too vast, blood and seasons mingled here, and time liquefied. Life here was flush with the soil, and, to identify with it, one had to lie down and sleep for years on the muddy or dried-up ground itself. Yonder, in Europe, there was shame and wrath. Here, exile or solitude, among these listless and convulsive madmen who danced to die. But through the humid night, heavy with vegetable scents, the wounded bird's outlandish cry, uttered by the beautiful sleeping girl, still reached his ears.
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That was a neat passage you quoted. Camus seems to specialize a bit in the puzzling ending. I just finished the story, and as with most of them, a re-read would be helpful. I won't worry about the ending right now, the matter of why he takes the stone down to the Cook's house instead of where I presume it was meant to go, to the church. Perhaps because his act had to be his own creation and not just following a ritual.
The story offered a comparison to Heart of Darkness. I suppose it's inevitable that tales like this hearken back to Conrad. But Conrad never came close to saying that the jungle and its inhabitants could heal a sick man. I think that is what happens to D'Arrast. He was alienated even from his body, and in the course of the terrifying ritual and the feat of carrying the stone, he finds something of an authentic self, perhaps. He has to get down in the mud, figuratively, to find his humanity. Is this an overstatement?
As for the title, it seems Camus is redirecting us as he did in "The Adulterous Woman." The growing stone appears early on, but nothing else is said about it. The hundred-pound stone becomes a means by which D'Arrast grows.
The story reconciles science and religion. D'Arrast is an engineer,
By fulfilling the vow of the cook he becomes an accepted participant
in the religion of the cook.
The growth of stones may be a common African belief. I heard of it
years ago from a Gullah.
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