The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Born in 1905 in Paris and graduated from Ecole Normale Superieure in 1929 Jean-Paul Sartre earned his doctorate in philosophy. One of the champion leaders of the cultural and philosophical movement flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s, namely Existentialism: His work ‘The Age of Reason’ published in 1945; a novel by Jean-Paul Sartre is primarily a work on the idea of ‘Freedom’. Sartre refused Nobel Prize for literature in 1960 and died in 1980. The seminal contribution of the novel lies in its explanation of Freedom. The identity and uniqueness of the literary work philosophically spring from the idea of ‘Nothingness’. Reviewing Sartre’s scholarly work, a herculean task presupposes a right headed, well-formed, and logical mind. I envision my review on the novel as merely an act of kindling a candle to the Sun. The conceptual replica of the story finds its locus in Sartre’s earlier masterpiece: Being & Nothingness (1943) and the Age of Reason is a fictional reprise of the work.
Age of Reason is the first part of a trilogy of novels – road to freedom series (second; The Reprive and the third; Troubled Sleep). The novel sets in 1938, plots the situation of France around the World War II and represents his main character, Mathieu, a French philosopher passionate with the idea of Freedom. Distressed with his issues concerning his mistress pregnancy, his quest for Freedom goes onto more intense with his carrying frantic attempts to raise money for an abortion. Marcelle is his girlfriend. Ivich is the young student, to whom Mathieu is infatuated with a causal relationship, and in her, he finds his Freedom as he has sexual relations with a young girl (Ivich); this fact is socially reprehensible for a man of his age. The triangularity of the characters and their interrelated emotions: Mathieu, Marcelle and Ivich form the narrative of the fictional novel and expose the bitter realities.
Mathieu feels Inner dissatisfaction. He denies the conventional social morality. He challenges social authority. Mathieu expresses his struggle for identity. He faces a dilemma either to accept the conventional society and settle with Marcelle or to live like a philosopher celebrating the Freedom of choice and enjoying his relations with Ivich. Hence, he makes desperate efforts for the abortion of Marcelle. And he does not accept any social bonding; Marriage as such. Eventually, confronted with the situations and people like Ivich’s friends and his brother Jacques, who made Mathieu, realize what Sartre calls the ‘Bad-Faith’:
“You are trying,” said Jacques, “to evade the fact that you’re a bourgeois and ashamed of it. I myself reverted to bourgeoisie after many aberrations and contracted a marriage of convenience with the party, but you are a bourgeois by taste and temperament, and it’s your temperament that’s pushing you into marriage. For you are married, Mathieu,” said he forcibly.
“First, I’ve heard of it,” said Mathieu.
“Oh yes, you are, only you pretend you aren’t because you are possessed by theories. You have fallen into a habit of life with this young woman: you go to see her quietly four days a week, and you spend the night with her. That has been going on for seven years, and there’s no adventure left in it; you respect her, you feel obligations towards her, you don’t want to leave her…Will you tell me how that differs from marriage – except for cohabitation?”
Mathieu finally steals money from Lola, a singer, for the abortion, but when he meets Marcelle, she denies and decides to settle herself marrying an ageing homosexual. It turns the very spirit of the novel as Mathieu realizes the reason that he is alone and nothingness which is like an image remains as representing his Freedom. His breakups with all relations exhibit as he paid the cost of Freedom and his choice that he affords to be alone inside. Before I conclude the review, the following figure fits to make a torchbearer effect on the review:
Matrics of the Age of Reason: Narratives & Characters
Interestingly, the fictional novel ends with Mathieu’s alienation from society. Being insightful in being alone Mathieu shows four major feelings of the time: Freedom, Bad Faith, Individual Existence and distraction from conventional social-morality. A rebellious character, Mathieu, struggles through and through in uncertainties. But what indeed he fights for and gains in his nothingness is his Being (Freedom) that sets novel’s paradigm-Sartre’s Existential narrative: Being & Nothingness. Nothing matters over and above one’s Existence and Freedom.