LE CRIME CHEZ LE HEROS CAMUSIEN: ETUDE DE LA MORT HEUREUSE ET DE LA CHUTE D’ALBERT CAMUS

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Department of Arts

ABSTRACT
This research focuses on crime in Albert Camus‟ hero, using La mort heureuse and La chute as case studies. Albert Camus is a twentieth Century writer, philosopher and founder of the philosophy of the absurd. Crime is one of the themes treated by Camus in his literary works. The objective of this research is to examine the crimes committed by the heroes in the books mentioned above. To achieve this objective, we apply the thematic approach, the sociological approach and the psychoanalytic approach. This study establishes two types of crimes in La mort heureuse namely: murder and theft.Meanwhile, we discover four types of crime in La chute; they are: theft, rape, inchoative crime and non-professional crime. It is established that Mersault and Clamence in La mort heureuse and La chute respectively, committed these crimes. We describe them as criminal heroes. This work demonstrates that there are provocative factors resulting into crimes. Using „le determinisme‟ and „la conscience de soi‟, two philosophical concepts we adopted toanalyze crime better, we bring out these factors. In La mort heureuse, we discover external factors like unemployment and poverty. In La chute, we see internal factors such as egotism and selfishness. This research also analyzes the impact of crime in the life of the hero and in the society. It is however noticed that in the two novels, crime births negative consequences like flight and solitude in the life of hero, death and deception in the society. Furthermore, we notice a positive impact of crime in the life of the two criminals: nature appreciation. This research also brings to lime light some of Camus‟ views on crime. We discover that Camus conceives crime in two perspectives: legal conception and moral conception. We also discover that crime as shown by Camus reflects the absurd theory; in the two novels of study, the criminal heroes are not discovered or punished for their crimes. Our conclusion is that no matter the provocative factors, one must not give into crime because crime is not of good omen neither for the individual nor for the society.