The Roads to Freedom () is a series of novels by French author Jean-Paul Sartre. Intended as a tetralogy, it was left incomplete, with only three complete volumes and part one of the fourth volume of the planned four volumes published in his lifetime and the unfinished second part of the fourth volume was edited and published a year after his death.
The three published novels revolve around Mathieu, a socialist teacher of philosophy, and a group of his friends. The trilogy includes: L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason), Le sursis (which is generally translated as The Reprieve but could cover a number of semantic fields from 'deferment' to 'amnesty'), and La mort dans l'âme (Troubled Sleep, originally translated by Gerard Hopkins as Iron in the Soul, Hamish Hamilton, 1950). The trilogy was to be followed by a fourth novel, La dernière chance (i.e. The Last Chance); however, Sartre would never finish it: two chapters were published in 1949 in Sartre's magazine Les Temps modernes under the title Drôle d'amitié.Caute, D. Introduction to The Reprieve by Jean-Paul Sartre, Penguin Classics, 2001. The last part of The Last Chance was later reconstructed and published in 1981 (see section below).
The novels were written largely in response to the events of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, and express certain significant shifts in Sartre's philosophical position towards 'engagement' (commitment) in both life and literature, finding their resolution in the extended essay L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Form of Humanism).
Background
In April 1938, Sartre's first novel Nausea was published. Three months later, in July, he wrote to Simone de Beauvoir: "I have all at once found the subject of my [next] novel, its proportions and its title... The subject is freedom." Originally it was to be titled "Lucifer", and written in two parts – "La Revolte" and "Le Serment" (The Oath).Quoted in Sartre: A Biography by Ronald Hayman (Carroll & Graf, 1987), p. 133. In the autumn of 1938, Sartre began writing the novel that was to become The Age of Reason, and continued working on the novel on and off for the next year. In early September 1939, he was called up into the French Army and was assigned to the meteorological unit. Except for some regular meteorological observations, this war work was not exacting, and he had plenty of time to work on his novel, his war diaries, and numerous letters to friends. At one point he produced seventy-three pages of the novel in thirteen days.Hayman, p. 153. He had completed the novel by December 31, 1939, and immediately started a sequel, which he originally wanted to call September (referring to the Munich Agreement of September 1938), and which became titled The Reprieve.Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life (Pantheon Books), p. 143. He finished writing The Reprieve in November 1943.See Chronology in Hayman, p. 494. However, he was constantly editing the manuscripts, and also turned them over to Simone de Beauvoir for critique.
His writing in these novels was semi-autobiographical. His separation from his accustomed life in Paris and the leisure and structure of his war work led him to continued introspection during this period.Hayman, pp. 154–157. Mathieu was based upon himself, Ivich was based on Olga Kosakiewicz (a student of Simone de Beauvoir and friend of Sartre), Gomez was based on Fernando Gerassi, Sarah on Stephania Avdykovych (both very close friends of Sartre and de Beauvoir), and Boris was based on Sartre's friend Jacques-Laurent Bost.Cohen-Solal, p. 254. Marcelle, perhaps loosely based on Simone de Beauvoir, was the character most removed from the real-life model.Hayman, p. 158.
The Age of Reason and The Reprieve were published together after the war in September 1945. "Sartre was by now France's leading intellectual voice, and the novels, not least because they defined a critical period in French history, were received with great enthusiasm by the French public."Gary Cox. Sartre and Fiction. Continuum Books, 2009, p. 100. However, some reviews were mixed. Louis Parrot writing for Les Lettres francaises said, "Jean-Paul Sartre has definitely taken his place among the greatest French writers of our day... His powerful talent has affirmed itself with rare brilliance." Gaéton Picon writing for Confluences said, "If Sartre's ambition was to force the doors of literary history, he has succeeded.. Like all great novelists, he also enjoys the privilege of having a universe of his own." However, Louis Beirnart, writing for Etudes, said, "If books could smell, one would have to hold one's nose in front of Sartre's latest books... Sartre's objective is, very clearly, to show life through its excrement and lower the value of existence to the level of the gutter and the dump."These three reviews were quoted in Cohen-Solal, p. 255. Orville Prescott in The New York Times, disliked the work, writing "as a creative work of fiction 'The Age of Reason' is a tedious disappointment. Its possible significance as 'existentialist fiction is pitifully meager, too", as well as criticizing Sartre's portrayal of the characters for being both uninteresting and unbelievable.
Extracts of the third novel in the trilogy, Iron in the Soul (or Troubled Sleep), appeared in the journal Les Temps Modernes in January and June 1949,See Chronology in Hayman, p. 496. and it was published in book form later that year. The reviews were not good. As for the reception, Sartre scholar Michel Contat says: Troubled Sleep "failed to provoke the anticipated and promised positive responses, as critics transferred their moral disappointment into an accusation that [Troubled Sleep] represented an exhaustion of Sartre's literary creativity. Although Sartre always said that he accorded no importance to the judgments of literary reviewers, his partial failure in their eyes intimidated him in the face of the fourth volume..."Michel Contat, in his "General Introduction for Roads of Freedom" in: Jean Paul Sartre, The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV, Continuum Books, 2009, p. 196. Consequently, Sartre was unable to complete the series.
Characters Mathieu Delarue – an unmarried philosophy professor whose principal wish (like Sartre's) is to remain free Marcelle – Mathieu's pregnant mistress Daniel – a homosexual friend of both Mathieu and Marcelle Boris – a student of Mathieu Ivich – Boris' sister, to whom Mathieu is attracted Brunet – Mathieu's Communist friend Gomez – a painter, who is fighting with the Republicans in Spain Sarah – Gomez's Jewish wife
Overview of the series "The first novel, L'âge de raison (1945; The Age of Reason), centers on philosophy professor Mathieu Delarue's uncertainty over whether to devote himself to his pregnant mistress or to his political party. The second volume, Le sursis (1945, The Reprieve), explores the ramifications of the appeasement pact that Great Britain and France signed with Nazi Germany in 1938. In the third book, La mort dans l'âme (1949; Troubled Sleep, published in Great Britain as Iron in the Soul), Delarue ends his indecisiveness by attempting to defend a village under attack from the Germans. Although he is apparently killed, Delarue expresses his ultimate freedom through his bravery."From the article on Jean-Paul Sartre in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, 1989, p. 372. Available online with library card, retrieved 7/24/2014.
The second part of Troubled Sleep focuses on Mathieu's communist friend Brunet in the POW camp. Drôle d'amitié (Strange Friendship) also focuses on Brunet, and his fellow prisoner Schneider, in the POW camp. In the final part, La dernière chance (The Last Chance), it is revealed that Mathieu was in fact not previously killed: he reappears in a stalag after two months in the hospital.
Shifting viewpoints within the novels In L'âge de raison, "the perspective changes from chapter to chapter throughout the account of a 48-hour period. In volume 2, Le Sursis, the time-span is a week, but the viewpoint shifts more rapidly, moving sometimes within a single phrase from one character's perspective to another's... The lack of punctuation, the juxtaposition of perspectives, and the intensity created by the single focus of a multiplicity of characters work together to convey the common humanity and intersubjective experience of the French on the verge of war... Volume 3, La mort dans l'âme, reverts to a slower pace of perspectival change."Quotation taken from the article on "Chemins de la liberté, Les" in The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, ed. by Peter France. Oxford, 1995, pages 159–160.
As for the experimental style of The Reprieve, Sartre wrote in 1945: "I tried to take advantage of the experiments in technique that certain writers of simultaneity, like Dos Passos and Virginia Woolf, have undertaken. I took up their question at the very point where they had let it lie, and I tried to uncover something new along this path. The reader will say whether or not I've succeeded."Chapter 3 entitled "Please Insert 1: 1945, Jean Paul Sartre", in The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV, by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Craig Vasey. Continuum Books, 2009, p. 23.
Of the first two books in the series, Sartre once said: "My intention was to write a novel about freedom. I wanted to retrace the path followed by some people and social groups between 1938 and 1944... I decided to tell The Age of Reason in an ordinary way, by simply showing the structured relationships that link a few individuals. But then come the days of September 1938, and all the barriers collapse... In The Reprieve we'll find again all the characters of The Age of Reason, but now they are lost in a crowd."Quoted in Cohen-Solal, p. 254.
Interpretation Overall, "the Roads to Freedom as a trilogy reflects many of Sartre's best-known existentialist concepts, including bad faith, or self-deception, the acknowledgment of freedom that comes with both anguish and personal responsibility for one's actions, and how those actions embody the personal and social morality that one promotes."Article by Tara J. Johnson on "The Roads to Freedom" in The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel, 1900 to the Present, ed. by Michael D. Sollars, p. 671.
In his book Sartre and Fiction, Gary Cox discusses the implications of the Roads to Freedom series:Gary Cox. Sartre and Fiction. Continuum Books, 2009. Except where noted, quotes are taken from: pages 99–101.
The Age of Reason... grew alongside Being and Nothingness for several years and echoes many of its central themes, particularly the themes of freedom, responsibility and being-for-others...
It was not to the war that Sartre turned for inspiration for the first volume of his trilogy, but to prewar Paris of the summer of 1938.... The Age of Reason is not nostalgic about the years between the wars. Rather it casts a detached and objective eye on a group of largely pathetic, emotionally immature characters who are too self-absorbed to really notice or care about the gathering clouds of war that will soon change their narrow little lives beyond recognition. With the coming of war Sartre began to change from a thinker preoccupied with the personal into a very political animal....
The Reprieve was written while the Germans occupied Paris ... It covers the eight days from 23 to 30 September leading up to the controversial Munich Agreement... With The Reprieve politics and history enter the trilogy with a vengeance, although events are not unfolded in the form of an abstract historical account but via myriad personal perspectives.