Chapter 7, Suffering and Horror Summary and Analysis

For Celine, the very foundation of human existence is suffering; to be human means to suffer. This is because of the necessary connection between human experience and the experience of the abject. Those repressed, unnameable forces which lurk within a person's psyche always make themselves present but can never be fully understood. This causes a person to be divided and feel uneasy in the universe, for he realizes that he cannot fully understand it. The exterior reflection of this suffering is manifested as horror: a horror of what the world has, a fear that one's suffering will continue. Though all of Celine's work is characterized by these emotions, "Journey to the End of the Night" captures these themes the best.

Abject literature, which Celine's novels are a precursor to, is an unstable category. Narrative assumes...