Journey to the End of the Night

“The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of nastiness.”

Bardamu’s story follows his journey into the depths of human “nastiness” (28), making his narrative an effort not to forget. Bardamu is an alienated individual who sees his alienation reflected in the world around him. This early statement functions as a manifesto for the book, announcing its intention to serve as a reminder of ugly truths.

“That was when they started shooting the soldiers to bolster their morale, whole squadrons of them.”

Bardamu does not like the war. His curt, cynical narration strips back the pageantry and heroism projected onto the conflict by civilians. There are no good people on either side, Bardamu believes, which is made evident in the way that human lives are so expendable that people can be shot to deter desertion. This self-defeating act is, for Bardamu, emblematic of the self-defeating war as a whole.

“The only argument we could have pitted against all those wielders of power was our contemptible little wish not to die and not to be burned alive.”

In the face of the war’s brutality, Bardamu and his fellow soldiers lack any meaningful power. Their only available currency is their lives, which are being spent wastefully by their superiors. All Bardamu can do is argue that he wants to live, that he does not want to sacrifice his life to this war. To not be burned alive seems a small request; it is not only denied but deemed “contemptible.”

“You don’t lose much when the rented house burns down.”

Bardamu, like many of his alienated and destitute peers, feels that he has no real no stake in society. In this analogy, Bardamu’s relationship to European society is compared to a renter’s relationship to their rented house: It doesn’t really belong to them, so its destruction is no great loss.

“While the war was still on, the seeds of our hateful peace were being sown.”

After the war, the collective trauma lingers on in a society that wants to forget. The peace is a “hateful” (69) one, still infused with the violence and loss of life that marked World War I. The attempts to return to normality are made impossible because men like Bardamu have not resolved the trauma they experienced. The entire society, in effect, has been traumatized by the violence and hatred of the war. The more they try to return to normal, the more they are reminded of their pasts.

“The war, by providing us with such unprecedented means of trying men’s nervous systems, has been a miraculous revealer of the human mind.”

Bardamu’s cynical appraisal of the war is echoed in the supposed benefits to the medical field. Professor Bestombes chats amiably about the way in which the traumatizing effect of the war has provided great insight and opportunity for the field of psychology. He cares less about the human suffering than the opportunities created. The war is a “miraculous” (89) provider, rather than one of the most destructive events in human history.

“A great moral carnival was in the offing aboard the Admiral Bragueton.”

Bardamu uses a metaphor to compare the ship sailing to the African colonies to a carnival. The carnival plays an important symbolic role in the novel, representing French society’s attempts to return to normalcy following the war. The carnival atmosphere of the colonialist cruise plays a similar role, demonstrating how the French colonial presence is ignoring violence and trauma through sheer collective delusion. They stage a carnival atmosphere to distract themselves from colonial violence, importing French society in a forced effort to deny reality.

“Are you a pederast by any chance?…No? Too bad!…They don’t steal as much.”

Louis-Ferdinand Céline frequently uses absurdist irony to reveal the hypocrisies of European society. Here, Bardamu’s experiences in Africa clearly define the priorities of the French colonial system. The colonial institutions are willing to ignore crimes such as pederasty because all they care about is money. Profits are more important than morals, and there is not even a fleeting attempt to feign morality. Out on the edges of the empire, the stark, immoral reality of colonialism is laid bare.

“With hardly a thought of what he was doing, he had consented to years of torture, to the crushing of his life in this torrid monotony for the sake of a little girl with whom he was vaguely related.”

Bardamu embarks on his journey, powered by spite and cynicism. He often meets people of a similar disposition, allowing him to indulge his nihilistic belief in the emptiness of society. Alcide is one of the few selfless people he meets. His effort to support the poor orphan is a display of benevolence that Bardamu can barely comprehend. Alcide is one of the few philosophical counterpoints to Bardamu’s worldview. He is rarely mentioned again.

“As if I knew where I was going, I put on an air of choosing and changed my direction.”

Bardamu drifts through life with no real purpose or ambition. The way he navigates the unknown streets of New York functions as a microcosm of his entire existence. Bardamu feigns decisiveness and purpose, but throws himself on the mercy of fate. He performs purpose for the rest of the world while inwardly accepting the directionless nature of his life.

“The loneliness in Africa had been pretty rough, but my isolation in this American anthill was even more crushing.”

Bardamu suffered from alienation in France. He has traveled across the world, but the alienation remains. No matter where he goes, the feeling is the same, yet Bardamu refuses to consider whether he may be the common factor. Bardamu’s reluctance to self-reflect lengthens his journey, meaning that he feels the need to constantly move to escape his sense of dread without wondering whether the issue may lie with him, rather than his location.

“‘Help! Help!’ I shouted, just to see if it would have any effect on them. None whatsoever.”

In America, Bardamu enacts his loneliness and alienation. He frames the incident as a joke, though the joke belies a serious subtext. Bardamu is calling for help, but no one will listen. He is ignored, so he insists that he was merely joking to reassure himself that he is not as alone, as ignored, or as isolated as he evidently has become. His cynicism is a coping mechanism, allowing him to rationalize his fear of being alone.

“Nothing mattered but the earsplitting continuity of the machines that commanded the men.”

The car factory is the clearest illustration of Bardamu’s critique of the capitalist system. Such a system is unforgiving of humanity, seeking to turn individuals into machines in the pursuit of profit. Nothing else matters in such a place, with the hostile environment actively damaging the expendable workers for economic benefit.

“The mother was looking at nothing and listening to nothing but herself.”

Bardamu’s cynical view of humanity is vindicated by the families of his patients. As her daughter suffers from terrible pain, a mother barely registers her child’s suffering. All she cares about is herself and her reputation. In Bardamu’s world, people are so self-involved and cynical that the potential death of a daughter is secondary to neighborhood gossip.

“That was their way of making love.”

In one of the novel’s most brutal scenes, a couple abuses their young daughter then has sex. This, Bardamu claims, is “their way of making love” (240), with the couple’s passions driven by the abuse of an innocent young girl. Bardamu is a silent witness to this violence, playing his role as the detached and dispassionate narrator of a cruel world. Bardamu’s detachment here is emblematic of his character: Though he is often horrified by the cruelty he sees around him, he never intervenes to change the world.

“I had definitely learned a thing or two by following Robinson in the night.”

Robinson and Bardamu are bound together by fate. They share experiences, trauma, and cynicism, with Bardamu able to sympathize with Robinson’s immorality because he understands Robinson’s alienation. Robinson has gone further into the night than Bardamu who, rather than changing direction or changing his life, studies Robinson with interest. They are bound together, seemingly, and Bardamu does little to stop himself or Robinson.

“Those are the same targets, but in addition, they’re shooting at airplanes now. Novelty. Progress. Fashion.”

Again, Céline uses irony to express the absurdity of the post-war world. Bardamu’s ironic praise of “Novelty. Progress. Fashion” points obliquely toward the horrors that have here been commodified as pleasures. Returning to the carnival and to the shooting gallery that triggered his trauma earlier in the novel, Bardamu sees that the shooting gallery has evolved. Like warfare itself, the gallery has seamlessly incorporated airplanes into the diorama. The commodification of Bardamu’s wartime trauma continues, part of the alienating economic system that turns suffering into a game.

“She radiated desire to live, the affirmation of life. In melodrama she had found new fires, real fire.”

Grandma Henrouille is motivated by spite. After her son and her daughter-in-law try to have her committed and then to have her murdered, she resolves to fight back by living. Her existence is a rebuke to them, which Bardamu recognizes and respects because it suits his cynical worldview. Bardamu often feels like a nihilist who struggles to find any real purpose in his life, so he can respect someone who decides to live to spite other people.

“There was nothing I could do to make her stop talking about Bébert, though it made her miserable and was bad for her and she knew it.”

Bébert’s aunt cannot stop talking about Bébert, even though such memories make her sad. Bardamu frames this as self-destructive behavior, as Bébert’s aunt is unable to do anything other than that which she knows will damage her mental health. This is true of many people, Bardamu believes, even if their self-destructive behavior is not as tragic.

“I listened to his heartbeat just to be doing something, the few gestures people expect under those circumstances.”

Bardamu’s training as a doctor tells him just enough to know the futility of trying to save a dying man. Nevertheless, he does what people expect. He goes through the futile motions of checking for a heartbeat, an empty gesture that will soon be forgotten. This small act is a metonym for much of Bardamu’s life, in which he enacts expected social forms despite knowing that they are meaningless and futile.

“If you’ve got to be unhappy, you may as well keep regular habits.”

Bardamu is a nihilist who discerns little purpose in his existence. “Regular habits” give him the illusion of purpose: So long as he knows that he must make coffee, pick up a paper, and arrive at work by a certain time, he has a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Though the habits themselves have no meaning, they are enough to keep him from sinking fully into despair. Bardamu is resigned to his misery, so he continues in the same miserable cycle for lack of a better idea.

“And all these people shooting. A shooting gallery always does business.”

For Bardamu, the shooting gallery is a painful reminder of his traumatic experience in the war. The gallery, much like the violence of the human race, will always do business. The constant presence and popularity of the shooting gallery is a symbolic reminder to Bardamu that society has learned nothing from the war.

“Then Robinson was like a stranger in the room, someone who had come from a horrible country and you wouldn’t have dared speak to.”

In death, Robinson becomes a stranger. The irony of Robinson’s meandering existence is that his constant, directionless motion gave him the appearance of purpose. Without motion, he is a stranger. The motion defined him, occupying the space where a person might be. Bardamu is appalled by the stillness of his dead friend, not wanting to recognize Robinson lest he recognize something of himself in Robinson’s depressing end.