Émile Zola
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 462 pages Rating: 4.06 | 8047 Users | 335 Reviews
Define Books Supposing La Bête humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart #17)
| Original Title: | La Bête humaine |
| ISBN: | 2070418014 (ISBN13: 9782070418015) |
| Edition Language: | French |
| Series: | Les Rougon-Macquart #17, Les Rougon-Macquart #15 |
| Characters: | Roubaud, Séverine Roubaud, President Grandmorin, Berthe de Lachesnaye, M. Denizet, M. de Lachesnaye, Mme. Bonnehon, Phasie, Misard, Flore, M. Camy-Lamotte, Cabuche, Pecqueux, Jacques Lantier |
| Setting: | France |
| Literary Awards: | French-American Foundation Translation Prize Nominee for Fiction (2008) |
Representaion Toward Books La Bête humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart #17)
« L'essentiel de La Bête humaine, c'est l'instinct de mort dans le personnage principal, la fêlure cérébrale de Jacques Lantier, mécanicien de locomotive. Jeune homme, il pressent si bien la manière dont l'instinct de mort se déguise sous tous les appétits, l'Idée de mort sous toutes les idées fixes, la grande hérédité sous la petite, qu'il se tient à l'écart : d'abord des femmes, mais aussi du vin, de l'argent, des ambitions qu'il pourrait avoir légitimement. Il a renoncé aux instincts ; son seul objet, c'est la machine. Ce qu'il sait, c'est que la fêlure introduit la mort dans tous les instincts, poursuit son travail en eux, par eux ; et que, à l'origine ou au bout de tout instinct, il s'agit de tuer, et peut-être aussi d'être tué. » Gilles Deleuze.Details Regarding Books La Bête humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart #17)
| Title | : | La Bête humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart #17) |
| Author | : | Émile Zola |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Folio classique |
| Pages | : | Pages: 462 pages |
| Published | : | May 16th 2001 by Gallimard (first published 1890) |
| Categories | : | Classics. Fiction. Cultural. France. European Literature. French Literature |
Rating Regarding Books La Bête humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart #17)
Ratings: 4.06 From 8047 Users | 335 ReviewsCritique Regarding Books La Bête humaine (Les Rougon-Macquart #17)
Could you kill someone? (Shush now. That's a rhetorical question. Think the answer to yourself in your head. We don't want to hand over compromising evidence to the prosecution in your inevitable criminal trial.) Now I'm not asking you if you could kill in self-defense or to protect your loved ones from harmbecause those cases are ethically cut-and-dried and very boring; I'm asking if you think you are capable of ending someone's life for pettier reasons: jealousy, revenge, or just good
I first read this book more than twenty years ago. It made an impression on me then, and still makes an impression on me -- in exactly the same way. La Bete Humaine is a strange work in that most of the main characters commit murder, are murder victims, or at the very least contemplate committing murder. All the characters are connected in some way with the railroad that connects Le Havre with Rouen and Paris. There is a certain bestial passion that drives their characters to contemplate and
This just suffered from my 7months of not reading slump:))) otherwise it wasn't that bad but it wasn't enjoyable either. The pace really picked up towards the end so it was alright I didn't struggle with reading it. But I s2g if I read one more line about trains I'll stab my eyeballs out.
The best so far in the Rougon-Macquart cycle for me. Mostly because this time around I didn't feel he constructed and manipulated the psychology of his characters to serve the plot so forcefully, which sometimes makes his character studies lack depth or consistency in other books. Yes, he's not the most subtle of authors by far, but I am getting used to that (well, I've had the previous 16 books of the cycle to practice on). Zola hardly ever opts for less then the portrait of a society in crisis
"She was a virgin and a warrior, disdainful of the male, which was what eventually convinced people that she really must be off her head." So that trace of sanity is what made the public consider her mad. You can open Zola at a random page and find deep knowledge of the human machinery. Since I finished Crime and Punishment, I have been meditating on La Bête Humaine over and over. I used to consider Jacques Lantier the most evil character imaginable: the incarnation of Death. After all, his
Without question, the most accessible of the fifteen of twenty Zolas Rougon-Macquart novels I have yet read. It could be described as a psychological murder mystery but, as the translator makes clear, the story is a whydunnit, not a whodunnit. This time the setting is the French railway, which during the Second Empire, as in other industrially advanced countries, was making travel easier. Jacques Lantier is a train conductor with an overwhelming compulsion, who had always wanted to kill someone
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