Royal Roads

the Royal roads is a Romance existentialist of the French author André Malraux published in 1930. The screen is held in Southeast Asia at the time colonial. The characters leave in forwarding in the jungle, along the old royal roads. One seeks initially objects monnayables, the other wants to find an old disappeared knowledge.

History

The characters are Claude Vannec , young British adventurer, and the old man Perken , a Dane who has more experience. They are nonconformist and want to cooperate to carry out their dreams: to fly of the reliefs and to find the adventurer Grabot who disappeared.

They can steal the reliefs, but their guide gives up them. They are in the jungle without knowing it. Then, because they do not want to meet the government, they go in an uncontrolled territory, the territory of the Months, which is also dangerous. But it is also the area which they suppose being the place of stay of Grabot .

The adventurers must survive in an hostile environment (marshes, obstacles, insects giant…). They make a pact with Stieng, but the pact becomes doubtful when the adventurers see that Stieng hold Grabot , that they treat in an inhuman way.

The chance to escape without being killed or imprisoned is mean. Perken can make possible - by using much courage and clearness - the escape. But it is wounded by a lancet. An arthritis suppurante (before the discovery of antibiotics, in a place without possibility of amputation sterile) condemns the old adventurer to die in horrible sufferings.

Form and style

The challenge is not only to survive in the dangerous jungle. It is also a metaphysical reflection concerning the man and his destiny.

The narration is with the third nobody (preterite) and - common fact in the novels of adventure - linear. The railroads are a symbol of the civilized world, that the two adventurers do not like. There are three topics: Erotism, death, the aventure/le nonconformism.

The world of Malraux is absurd, it does not have there an explanation for the sad end: no thought divine, no future reward, nothing could justify the end of a human existence .

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