The character of Bardamu in Journey to the End of Night

The character of Bardamu in Celine's novel Journey to the End of the Night takes a spiritual journey in the course of the novel, and the title indicates the direction in which this journey is directed. In the context of the novel, the author holds civilization in a variety of manifestations up to scrutiny and finds it rotten to the core. His hero lives in a world that is itself insane, and when he ends in an asylum, it is truly that--an asylum protecting him from the insane world on the outside, a world far more insane than anything found on the inside. Different aspects of Western civilization are represented in the novel, and in each the author shows through Bardamu's experiences how corrupt the system is at heart and how necessary it is to flee from it. The values held up as vital and paramount by the system are values the author does not prize and sees as themselves corrupting and destructive. The way this operates in the novel can be examined with reference to a specific dimension of social criticism, such as that directed by the author at America.

Before considering the American section, however, the theme of flight should be noted as it is formulated in the opening chapters, for flight is the motif that carries Bardamu to Africa and America and elsewhere, always trying to escape the morally bankrupt values of Western society. It is the reality and foolishness of war that brings this fact home to Bardamu and that sets him on his journey, a journey both physical

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Category: Literature - T