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Andre Malraux's novel Man's Fate

This study will examine Andre Malraux's novel Man's Fate. The novel carries heavy political and philosophical weight, and the reader who seeks reading material which will distract him from the weightier issues of the twentieth century will not find much distraction in this novel. While Malraux clearly offers the suggestion that Communism is the answer to many of society's problems, and while he also gives much weight to the existential point of view of reality, neither of these philosophies or ways of life serve as panaceas in the novel itself. In short, it is a dark and relatively pessimistic work. The author clearly has his political and philosophical biases, but he is not so foolish as to argue in a work of art that the world will be turned into a paradise overnight if only others will believe as he does.

Writing in the early 1930s, Malraux was, like many other artists and thinkers of that time, writing under the influence of the growing force of Communism in the world. The horrors of the more totalitarian aspects of Communism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere had not yet become fully apparent to the world, and in this novel it is obvious that Malraux believed Communism to be a desirable step forward for the nation of China and for its, many hundreds of millions of people. The characters in the novel are not merely ideas wearing human clothes, however, for Malraux never lets his political or philosophical beliefs overwhelm his artistic vision. He clearly favors Communism as a means of improving society and the lot of man, but he expresses this view from the perspective of an artist and not from the perspective of an ideologue, at least in most cases.

For example, it would certainly not please Communist propagandists in China or anywhere else to read Malraux's analysis of the dark center of man's lonely consciousness: " . . . First of all there was solitude, the inescapable loneliness behind the living multitude like...

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Andre Malraux's novel Man's Fate. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:10, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705009.html