The sense of a survival guilt – two images of twentieth-century's French theatre

Krystyna Modrzejewska

Abstract


Two characters, Franz Gerlach in Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Condemned of Altona (Les sequestrés d’Altona, 1959) and Théo Steiner in Toujours l’orage (1997) by Enzo Cormann, are influenced by their traumatic experience of the war that makes them evade reality and leads them to self-exclusion. Talking to other people provokes questions concerning their identity, family, human development and destiny. Both of the characters are concerned by the feeling of guilt for being alive; this shows how sinuously destiny works in particularly difficult situations while one’s behaviour and actions, once they are recorded by one's conscience, do not let you live anymore because the responsibility becomes too heavy

Keywords


War; guilt; twentieth-century French theatre; Sartre; Cormann

References


Arendt H. (1987) : La Tradition cachée. Paris : Christian Bourgois.

Bauman Z. (2006) : Vies perdues. La modernité et ses exclus. Paris : Payot.

Cormann E. (1997) : Toujours l’orage. Paris : Minuit.

Finkielkraut A. (2000) : L’ingratitude. Conversation sur notre temps. Paris : Gallimard.

Furet F., Nolte E. (1998) : Fascisme et communisme. Paris : Plon.

Morin E. (2005) : L’Introduction à la pensée complexe. Paris : Seuil.

Sartre J.-P. (1960) : Les Séquestrés d’Altona. Paris : Gallimard.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2015.39.1.108
Date of publication: 2016-01-04 11:13:49
Date of submission: 2015-12-21 12:02:14


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Copyright (c) 2015 Krystyna Modrzejewska

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