The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

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He leaned towards her : and to punish her, he laid his lips lightly against a cold, closed mouth : he was feeling defiant: Ivich was silent. The work seeks to illustrate the existentialist notion of ultimate freedom through presenting a detailed account of the characters' psychologies as they are forced to make significant decisions in their lives. Sartre’s sharp and restless probing into the nature of freedom beguiles and infuriates at every turn yet ‘The Age of Reason’ remains compulsively readable. But she is only the most extreme example of the quality all the characters share, Sartre’s own disgust and revulsion at life, of being alive, of being human.

In essence, they have not defined themselves as a member of the high life but rather defined themselves as a fraud. Incidentally, as everyone is about to get pretty inebriated in this section, during this era getting drunk is referred to as being “tight”. The pair discusses their situation, with Lola fussing over him and expressing many of the glaring foibles in their relationship. Mathieu persuades Lola to let the terrified Ivich depart and then confesses that he, Mathieu, stole the money. Sometimes it felt like ‘Monty Python and the French Philosopher’, with John Cleese saying in a heavy French accent, ‘Oh no, I feeel ze anguish of freedom oppressing my consciousness and feeelling me with despair at ze ‘uman condeetion’.Starting to age, she’s found a picture of herself from 1928 (the timeline for Age of Reason is the summer of 1938), in the picture she’s dressed in a man’s jacket and remarks to Delarue: “I was a scream in those days.

But this gives an inaccurately optimistic sense of the novel; in reality it is Mathieu’s gloomy meditations on his directionless life which have the most power.When he does nothing of the sort but instead proudly brandishes the money for the abortion, Marcelle’s face falls, she is ashen, she says, ‘So that’s what you think of me’. you condemn capitalist society, and yet you are an official in that society; you display an abstract sympathy with Communists, but you take care not to commit yourself, you have never voted.

It’s at this moment Delarue finally announces his situation to Boris, who suggests Lola will provide him with the four thousand francs he needs. Ivich did not excuse him : that morning, as on all occasions, she would look at the pictures with her wild, maniacal air : Mathieu would stand beside her, ugly, persistent, and forgotten. Despite going to great lengths to achieve this, noting many French women’s startled reactions as they see his handsome mug home into view, he eventually backs out of the idea. This minor incident is important as Delarue is soon to be in considerable financial bother, but his tendency to throw his money away remains a consistent, rather inexplicable habit in the novel.The same goes with a totalitarian dictatorship were we will self-censure ourselves for fear that if we do not we may bring the wrath of the state upon us.