Innocent Murderer: Crime, Trial and Punishment in Albert Camus' The Outsider (From Images of Crime: Representations of Crime and the Criminal in Science, the Arts and the Media, P 199-246, 2001, Hans-Jorg Albrecht, Afroditi Koukoutsaki, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-192094)

• NCJ Number: 192100
• Author(s): Alfredo Verde
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 48 pages
• Sale Source: Max-Planck-Institute Fur Auslandisches und Internationales Strafrecht
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Case Study
• Language: English
• Country: Germany (Unified)

Annotation

This article examines the articulation of the relationship between the criminal, the crime, and the society that punishes the offender, through the reading of Camus' novel "The Outsider."

Abstract

A possible function of the use of literature in criminology and psychology is that it provides "clinical cases" which can be manipulated as if they were real in order to generate and reaffirm hypotheses. Reflecting the division of the novel into two parts, the article also consists of two sections. The first section examines the deeper dynamics that lead to crime. The second analyzes changes in the personality of the hero as they are described through the experience of imprisonment, trial, and conviction. The article presents thoughts on the way in which the hero subconsciously perceived the function of the penal system and the dynamics that associate the perpetrator of the crime with the society that imposes punishment. Camus wanted to underline, through the distinction between the crime that the hero really committed and the one for which he is being convicted, that the crime that draws the revenge of society is different from the one committed. Notes, references