Man’s Fate: In Response to Professor Hanley

Malraux and the “Revolutionary Imagination”

Milton’s revolutionary in Paradise Lost seeks self-sovereignty and vengeance. Donnelly’s imagination in Caesar’s Column is a futuristic panorama of revolution with social, economical, and political pontification and fundamental resolve. While Babel’s revolutionary thematic in Red Calvary, describes the cruelties, destruction, and devastation of war: socially, culturally, politically, and economically. And the French Revolution graphics illustrate and memorialize the struggle. However, Malraux’s “revolutionary imagination” give the revolutionaries depth and dimension. Individual struggle: internal conflict and complex “emotional interior;” external pressures: family obligations, the absence of friendship, and self-interest and commitment in Man’s Fate create awareness for the reader: revolution is a rebellion with the self.


Edith