Journey to the End of the Night

Monsieur and Madame Puta run a small jewelry store. Years before, Bardamu worked there alongside another man named Voireuse. He returns to the Putas’ store with Voireuse in search of pity and money. They receive little, but Voireuse suggests that they visit another family he knows. He takes Bardamu to visit the family of his friend, who died in the war. Voireuse visits them regularly, and he is typically given a hundred francs. He suggests that Bardamu could lie to the “broken-hearted” (101) mother of his dead friend. Bardamu, desperate for money, agrees. At the house, however, they find the dead man’s father talking to another solider: Bardamu recognizes Robinson, who reveals that the mourning mother took her own life the previous day. As such, none of them will get any money. Bardamu, Robinson, and Voireuse venture out into the night. They eat dinner together but cannot afford to hire a sex worker, even if they pool their money.

Finally, Bardamu is let go from military service. He says that his “brains [are] scrambled for good” (104). He buys passage on a ship to Africa, planning to take up a position in a French colony to earn money far from the war. He believes that he can make a fortune in the colonies. Aboard the Admiral Bragueton, however, the other passengers look down on him. The overwhelming heat, the malaria, and the prevalence of alcohol turns the passengers against him; they believe that he is a spy. Sensing that the other passengers want to kill him, Bardamu feels himself changed beyond recognition. He casts aside his solitary tendencies and charms the captain and the male passengers. He listens attentively to their stories, toasting to their bravery. Privately, he praises himself as a “creator of euphoria” (116). As soon as the boat reaches the African port, he slips ashore on a canoe. He arrives in Bambola-Fort-Gono, a French colony ruled by a governor. The sweltering heat, the corrupt local government, and the hedonistic colonialists perturb Bardamu, who is offered a position running a remote trading post in Bikomimbo.

Bardamu meets with the Director of the colonial operation to learn more about the trading post. The Director praises life in the colony, which he claims is “always a holiday” (121). He warns Bardamu that the man he is replacing is unreliable and, apparently, sick. The man has not been heard from in months. Bardamu is given a local guide and, filled with “an enormous desire to go back to Europe” (124), prepares to venture out into the jungle interior. Before leaving, he observes the locals with contempt. He has many racist opinions about the African people who are put to work by the French colonialists. The Director, he suspects, is one of many corrupt figures in the local authority. Many of the French people he meets are terribly sick with malaria and other diseases; no one will tell him “exactly what species of freak” (126) he is meant to replace in Bikomimbo. Bardamu observes the corruption, the narcotics, the alcohol, and the exploitation pedaled by the colonialists, “all the tricks of the conqueror’s trade” (129). He studies the way in which the colonialists beat and exploit the Africans to make money. The Africans, he notes, must be forced to work, while the Europeans do so voluntarily. Bardamu has more respect for the men who must be made to work rather than those who are deluded enough to volunteer themselves in the hope that they will one day be rich. Fort-Gono, Bardamu decides, is “awash with mutilated desires” (133). He is filled with doubts about his new job at the “experimental trading post” (136). He would rather get sick and return to the hospital. Nevertheless, he sets off on a boat up the river to the trading post.

On the way to the trading post, Bardamu’s boat stops in a small port named Topo, run by Lieutenant Grappa, who is running a gray-market business buying and selling miscellaneous goods. Bardamu meets Sergeant Alcide, a solemn and resigned figure with whom he stays for two weeks. He watches Grappa order the beatings of local people in an attempt to administer what he believes to be justice. Meanwhile, Alcide is running his own lucrative illegal trading operation. Alcide reveals that he is saving money to support his orphaned niece in France. Bardamu is embarrassed by someone whose “heart [is] so much superior” to his (148).

Bardamu continues his journey to the trading post, where he will need to take stock of whatever inventory remains and replace the current manager. After 10 days of travel, Bardamu comes across a hut situated between two boulders. Inside is a gruff, bearded man waiting for him. The man warns about the terrible conditions at the trading post, where the squalid water causes sickness and the local people are loud and dangerous. The “out-and-out rogue” (155) seems strangely familiar to Bardamu, especially as he explains his plan to vanish into the jungle and abandon the post. There is almost nothing left of the original inventory, he claims. Eventually, Bardamu recognizes Robinson, the man with whom he tried to desert on the frontlines. The noise of the jungle causes “hours of intermittent terror” (158), and Robinson recommends that Bardamu stuff his ears with cotton to block out the sound. In the night, Robinson vanishes and leaves Bardamu in charge of the trading post and the local staff that Robinson recruited. Quickly, Bardamu becomes bored. Soon after, he becomes sick. He receives letters from the Director, “stinking with insults and idiocy” (160). He ignores the threats as he surveys his hopeless situation.