Belonging In Romulus My Father By Albert Camus

Belonging is a matter of choice
Belonging is something we are all entitled to, but is not something that we are necessarily allowed to choose, but deep down in each and every individual we have an innate drive to belong/not belong to something or someone. We may have a sense of belonging in one area, but not so much in the other, so we can see that to belong, we must act. We discover that being isolated and alienated is an easy thing to happen, but we can find an alternative path to avoid this by choosing the path that is most comfortable and more enjoyable for the individual, and by this we can belong, but sometimes, moving house, school or being with someone you don’t like enhances the fact of not belonging as not a choice.
Belonging itself cannot be a choice as we discover in such novels like ‘Romulus My Father’ by Raimond Gaita and ‘The Stranger’, by Albert Camus.
We can see that it wasn’t their choice to leave Yugoslavia from the quote on their way to Frogmore. “We packed up and went to Frogmore, neither speaking to the other, each absorbed in his own grief and remorse.” From this quote we see that they are devastated from what they have had to do, the 4 year old Raimond having to deal with so much in such a short period, along with Romulus and Christine. We can feel the disbelief in the characters choice of words, as they feel they shouldn’t be there and should be back in Yugoslavia, by this we can see that belonging ISN’T a matter of
choice.

‘The Stranger’, by Albert Camus, represents a man who does not feel any condition to anyone or anything. Meursault seems not to have a sense of emotion for the occurring actions in his life, and as a result, Camus pictures him as a senseless man. Many people in society go through life-breaking crisis that takes them several weeks even months to get over, meanwhile Meursault goes through some of the most immense problems during his life, yet he shows little emotion toward his reality. The novel starts off with the quote “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.” By this we see Mersault as a peculiar individual with no feelings, supporting the fact that belonging or not belonging is a choice. He chooses to drift away from the norm of society; he believes that a life-breaking crisis can be not even thought about and just be passed on, since these things are an occurring thing in life.

We see again that belonging ISN’T a matter of choice as we see that Christine cannot come into terms with the basic nature of belonging within one’s own family. Christine’s mental illness along with her multiple lovers forces her out of the family, not being able to take care of her child, Raimond. Christine attempts to belong to Romulus, Raimond and to the community but due to her mental illness she couldn’t belong to any of these. Romulus doesn’t see the illness until she actually starts showing the signs of madness. She would stay in bed and do nothing for days on ends and not cater for Romulus or her child. In order to belong, we must act, we see that Christine didn’t act and instead stayed and did nothing, went out with other men and ditched her child. Christine in the end cannot handle any more of the disasters, problems and her illness and eventually commits suicide to end all problems in her life. We see that in the end, we cannot always choose the path we take to belong.

We again see that belonging isn’t a matter of choice at times in ‘The Stranger’ Mersault says he had to shoot the Arab near the beach as he said, “it was an act of self-defence”, when a man is shot in the chest once, we believe that they are dead, but instead, Mersault shoots him 4 times, while he “blurted out that it was because of the sun” to the courtroom. Mersault is an existentialist, believing that God will not help him and it is on his own thoughts and actions that will get him through the present, he doesn’t think of the past and future or the consequences, and because of that, he doesn’t belong to anything, this is not a choice, but as an existentialist, he is forced into that category of belonging to no one or thing.

We by relating these two texts, we enhance our knowledge on what goes on around us and within us, we see that belonging isn’t a matter of choice, but in smaller components, belonging can be seen as choice. In order to belong, we must act, or we must have some key components of good moral or value in order to belong within the community or a group of people.