journey to the end of the night by louis ferdinand céline

A generous young prostitute named Molly falls for Bardamu and helps to buy his freedom from the plant. Working on the automobile assembly line for Ford, he nearly goes crazy with the mechanical repetitiveness of the work. After an unfortunate meeting with Lola, he leaves New York for a job in Detroit. Bardamu manages to stay in the United States, but finds poverty and solitude, instead of the riches and friends of which he had dreamed. The ship docks in New York City, a place Bardamu has always dreamed of visiting. Bardamu leaves Africa in a terrible fever, aboard a Spanish ship, which has hired him as an oarsman, should he recover. Bardamu falls sick and becomes so delirious with fever that he sets fire to the post and deserts it. Here, he meets Robinson again and takes over his position as manager of a colonial rubber trading post, a solitary and ramshackle hut in the middle of the African bush. Once cured of his illness, Ferdinand Bardamu decides to go to Africa, where he is faced with the unbearable heat and boredom of the colonies, as well as the cruel exploitation of the natives. Ferdinand's second girlfriend, a violinist named Musyne, who also works entertaining the troops, abandons him during a bombardment of the city. When he begins to resist going back to the front, Lola leaves him. Bardamu realizes how much profit stands to be made during wartime by those who are not actually forced to fight in the trenches. This is when he meets Lola, a pretty American nurse who has come to volunteer. Wounded and traumatized by the war, Bardamu returns to Paris for treatment and is given a military medal. They make plans to escape together, but their efforts fail. Bardamu also realizes he is, in the eyes of his countrymen, something of a coward.įerdinand Bardamu is given a reconnaissance mission, during which he meets a fellow soldier named Robinson, who is looking for a way to desert the army.

Bardamu cannot understand why he is supposed to shoot at the Germans, who have never personally harmed him. Once at the front, faced with the horrors and absurdity of war, he quickly loses his enthusiasm. Surrounded by the music of a military parade, a young Frenchman, Ferdinand Bardamu, decides, in a moment of heroism, to enlist in the army and join the fight against the Germans. The novel opens in Paris, near the time of World War I, in 1914.

Journey to the end of the night by louis ferdinand céline