"You live in a void, you're an abstraction, a man who is not there. It can't be an amusing sort of life."
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The Age of Reason puts Mathieu Delarue's character on trial. We find him in a moral quandary over his mistress of seven years, recently pregnant; does he marry her, or does he try to maintain his `freedom'? The first option is seen by Mathieu as something of a dreaded defeat, the latter... well that develops into more of a problem as it dawns on him that he has absolutely no firm idea of what freedom means. The more the issue is explored the more obscure it becomes, the less assured Mathieu feels in his life, and so the more fateful his choice of marriage or abortion becomes.
The novel's really a fictional presentation of Being and Nothingness and what is mainly explored through Mathieu's character here is issue of bad faith. He criticises bourgeois life but, as the crisis of Marcelle's pregnancy proves, he is only one decision away from the traditional water-torture of career and family. He approves of his friend Brunet, a Communist, but at the same time admits to himself:
"...I don't want any change. I enjoy railing against capitalism, and I don't want it suppressed because I should no longer have any reasons for railing, I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people."
In his attempt to conform to a youthfully misconceived ideal of freedom Mathieu finds himself beholden to emptiness and ugliness, ultimately he has achieved nothing with his life. The Age of Reason is very much the realisation of a life wasted and sets the scene well for the following volumes, The Reprieve and Iron in the Soul, where Mathieu must define some kind of engagement with life as it forces itself upon him through the second world-war.
Now I know all this sounds a tad glum but Sartre is a writer with a violent sense of humour and, as with his earlier novel Nausea, I did find I was laughing plenty after my initial dismay at a world so grim had subsided. I mean;
"There was in that ill-favoured face of Sarah's an intriguing, almost voluptuous humility that evoked a mean desire to hurt her, to crush her with shame, `When I look at her', Daniel used to say, `I understand Sadism.'"
I found it took me a couple of chapters to acclimatise to Sartre's superficially bleak mood, but after that The Age of Reason was spankingly good. If you haven't read any of the philosophy don't worry, Sartre was a good enough fiction writer for the Roads to Freedom series to stand on its own merits. Top stuff.
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Age of Reason
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The Age of Reason is a narrative fiction parallel of (parts of) Sartre's philosophical work 'Being and Nothingness.' The latter is supposed to be a bit difficult to read, but the former is a joy. If it suits you. You don't have to get into the heavy stuff about personal freedom, bad faith and the death of God etc to enjoy this, because it is written so well that you can just take it as a story at face value. The difference for me is, however, the underlying idea. I think a novel with a great central idea is a great thing. See Catch 22 for a similar example. Here, Sartre presents to us the situation where you find tourself unable to make the next move because it will go against your principles. But that very move will preserve your freedom, which is in fact your guiding principle. So do you break your own rules to allow yourself to carry on living by them, or just chuck everything away and start over? I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty base to build a story on. I'm afraid I can't explain it as well as it should be, but I hope you get the drift. The setting, characters and events are all presented in a very colloquial style and manner - don't expect anything really heavy here - he saves that for the 2nd and 3rd installments of the trilogy. I liked it. Top 5 book of all time. Read it while you're young enough to appreciate the challenge. Go on! Eh? Go on....
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The Age of Reason
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The first part of Satre's epic "Roads to Freedom" trilogy tells of a philosophy teacher Mathieu's struggle to find the 4000 francs needed to provide his mistress with a safe abortion. Mathieu is a man consumed by his personal fight to achieve and maintain true freedom. Satre brilliantly depicts the landscape of Paris in the summer of 1938, the second world war looming large on the horizon. All of the author's characters are imbued with reality and tragedy, from the tormented homosexual Daniel, to Mathieu himself. It is this that makes the creates the empathy between the reader and characters, and makes the storyy so compelling. This book is a masterpiece and one of the best novels of the post war period, whether read as a stand - alone piece or as part of the Satre's trilogy of war novels.
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I love this book because the characters are so real.
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The hero of this book is a man who has everything worked out in his life, until his girlfriend falls pregnant and he has to question the principles that he has lived by so far. The whole book focuses on two days in the summer of 1938, and follows Mathieu as he tries to find money to pay for an abortion, but still trying to convince himself that he is free and that his freedom is worth something. All the time the there's something creeping up in the background to bring a brilliant twist to the story. Sartre was a French philosopher and this book is an easy introduction to existentialiam, for those interested in philosophy and those not alike!
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