Journey to the End of the Night by Louise-Ferdinand Celine
Through the improbable journeys of the petit bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I to the African jungle, to New York, to the Ford Factory in Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of cruelty and violence. Céline’s ferocious energy is perfectly translated by Ralph Manheim, and William T. Vollmann’s dramatic afterword offers a new, ferociously alive perspective on this amazing book.
Journey to the End of the Night by Louise-Ferdinand Celine
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This set included the treatment of mentally ill individuals, which is a major theme in the book. Back then, insanity was thought to be a hazardous and frequently uneducated condition. Dr Bardamu, the book’s antihero, flees post-war France and poverty by moving to Africa, but the experience of colonizers there during the terrible post-slavery period was in some ways just as horrific. Millions of people striving to survive in the dirty suburbs of cities and towns back home experienced poverty, sickness, prostitution, alcoholism, and other appalling living circumstances fit for a Charles Dickens novel. When the western world was on the verge of the great crash, there was a lot of unemployment and insufficient social security, thus the story is very much of its day.
We frequently overlook its gloominess and the horrific conditions in many people had to endure. The societal setting explains Celine’s contempt for people, at least in my mind, which is so overtly displayed in this book.
Bardamu enlists in the First World War at the beginning of the book, a decision he soon regrets. Bardamu’s outlook is predetermined: he is resigned to his fate, doubting authority, and searching for an escape because he is appalled by the senseless slaughter, the futility of the battle, and the brutality of those in charge. Bardamu first encounters Leon Robinson, who is also trying to get away, while looking for a way out.
Robinson and Bardamu are found in a variety of various places throughout the book, including no man’s land, Paris, Africa, and New York, but they are unable to change their situation, lamenting their luck and barely scraping by.
Even though Bardamu’s wanderings seem aimless, they are in no way annoying. In addition, what at first seems to be the main character’s irate outbursts are actually sharp criticisms of his present society, including hostility toward former service members, the right of the poor, colonialism, and the hypocrisy of authority.
The book’s concepts, morality, attitudes toward sex and crime, and the book’s parody of authority, not to mention the language, certainly explain why there was a stir when it was first published.
