Fiction Friday (109)

When I finished reading the last book I was reading, the libraries were still closed, which meant going once again to my "To-Be-Read" shelf. After reading some lighter books recently, I really wanted to dig into something literary. On my shelf was a hundred year old copy of this book which I'd been meaning to read for years. It was time, and it was really a good time to read this book with all the unrest in the world at this moment.

 

 

Light by Henri Barbusse

(1919)

France at the turn of the century was like many Western societies at that time. The industrial revolution had sunk it's teeth into the culture, and when it started to falter, it dragged the working class down within its clutches. The aristocracy remains relatively unaffected except by the increase of wealth and influence, with a decrease in civic responsibility.

Yet, there is always love if only for the youth. We are told the tale of a young man making modest gains in life when he falls in love and sees beauty despite the misery and political unrest around him. But the young man learns that love fades and that upward mobility is reserved for the few.

Life begins to pass quickly when it becomes monotonous...but there is always war to change all of that.

The divided ideals competing for space all converge in the culmination that would become The Great War. Anarchists, Communists, Militarists, Nationalism, Royalty and ruling classes, workers and radicals...it erupts into war, as it always seems to do. Swept up in a wave of national pride, our young man, who isn't quite as young as he used to be, enlists in the Army.

The descriptions of life in the trenches between France and Germany reads literally like Hell. It's an emptiness void of humanity, of personality, of choice. It's a never-ending repetition of hopelessness. I've always thought of Barbusse as a writer of bleakness. He sinks into the depth of the human soul and finds the void that exists after each layer is peeled away. There was no doubt in my mind that he could capture that experience, as well as the perspective of the lost man who returns home from the front into a world of patriotic nonsense.

What I didn't expect was the last thirty pages or so which renew the sense of hope from earlier. Love is renewed, though not the same as youthful love, but a deeper understanding of what it means to share a life with someone. And there is an endless hope for humankind. No matter how terrible the forces of war are, the people will always rise up again. The wave of militarism will pass. Equality and Justice will prevail, because regardless of nationality, we are all human.

This is not a light read, but a powerful one.