Le Malentendu “is austere in its plot and characterization and claustrophobic in mood”.[2]
Camus “deliberately contrived an effect of polished, articulate, non-colloquial discourse”, as in a classical tragedy.[2] Through the necessity of writing while under occupation, “the play is cloaked in metaphor, trailing a train of symbols, with Camus styling the drama with all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. In the Greek style, each character gives the argument for his or her actions, whether for good or ill. Thus Camus is able to air his thoughts on innocence, grief, guilt, betrayal, punishment, integrity, and silence, wrapping all these in what is essentially an existential debate. Although Camus' arguments come thick and fast, the play moves at a deliberate pace as it develops into more of a treatise than an organic drama".[3]
“It is the most poetic of all the works Camus wrote for the stage, but one cannot claim that speech and situation always match perfectly”.[4]
The characters “unwittingly express ambiguities that escape their awareness”, and indirectly express philosophical ideas. Le Malentendu is “so heavily laden with ambiguities and multiple levels of meaning that it borders on caricature, a fact that may explain its relative failure as a tragedy”.[5]
