Andre Malraux's novel Man's Fate
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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
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vents, or the forces of history rolling inexorably forward, of the absurdity of life from the existential point of view.
Gisors is meant by Malraux to represent a good man who was unable to live up to his ideals, but on the way to a noble failure, Gisors expresses some of the basic truths about human nature which the author wants to emphasize. Gisors is high on opium, and he expresses the suffering he has felt as a result of his failure to live as a Communist in the world: "'All suffer,' he thought, 'and each one suffers because he thinks. At bottom, the mind conceives man only in the eternal, and the consciousness of life can be nothing but anguish. One must not think life with the mind, but with opium . . . ' Liberated from everything, even from being a man, he caressed the stem of his pipe with gratitude, contemplating the bustle of all those unknown creatures who were marching towards death in the dazzling sunlight, each one nursing his deadly parasite in a secret recess of his being. 'Every man is a madman,' he went on thinking, 'but what is a human destiny if not a life of effort to unite this madman and the universe . . . He saw Ferral again, lighted by the low lamp against the background of the night full of mist. '
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Approximate Word count = 1612
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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