Resumen
Resumen de El diablo en el cuerpo
Para quién es
For readers who love short, sharp novels about desire, youth and moral blindness, and anyone curious about France in the First World War.
De qué trata este libro
The Devil in the Flesh is a short novel by Raymond Radiguet, published in France in 1923. Radiguet wrote it as a teenager, and he died that same year, aged twenty. The book draws on his own youth during the First World War. It tells of a schoolboy of fifteen who falls in love with a young woman a few years older, whose fiancé is away at the front.
The story is told by the boy himself, years later, and he does not flatter himself. He admits his selfishness, his pride and his cruelty, and he never begs the reader to forgive him. The setting is a quiet town on the river Marne, near Paris, where the war is a distant noise and a chance for freedom. When the book appeared, many readers were shocked, because it showed desire flourishing while soldiers died. What you get here is a clear, fast account of a love affair and a sharp portrait of a young man. Let us begin where the boy begins, with the summer when war breaks out and school empties.
En este resumen
- 1War gives a boy his freedomFree
- 2A girl waits for her soldier
- 3Desire grows in the shadow of war
- 4Lies, jealousy and a marriage
- 5What the novel is really about
- 6How the story is told
Idea clave 1 de 6
War gives a boy his freedom
The novel opens with the narrator admitting that he will be blamed for what he tells. He is still a young boy when war is declared in 1914, and he is glad. School closes early, the summer stretches ahead, and the great event seems to belong to other people. He does not mean to be heartless. He simply feels, as many teenagers do, that the world is arranged to give him room.
He lives with his family in a town on the banks of the Marne, east of Paris. His father is easygoing and fond of his son, and his mother is protective, but neither of them watches him closely. The boy is clever, restless and used to doing as he likes. He swims, wanders and reads, and he has already had small, secret brushes with love. He thinks of himself as older than his years, and the book lets us see how much he is still a child.
The war soon changes the pattern of the town. Men leave for the front, women wait for letters, and schools and families lose their usual rules. Rumours, news and fear move through the streets, yet daily life carries on in odd, ordinary ways. The narrator watches all of it with curiosity more than dread. His tone is calm, even amused, and that calm is one of the book's most unsettling features.
This opening matters because it sets the pattern for all that follows. The boy does not fight, does not grieve and does not suffer as others do. His war is a stretch of unsupervised time, and in it he finds a first great passion. Radiguet wants us to feel how the same event can mean horror to one person and liberty to another.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about El diablo en el cuerpo
What is The Devil in the Flesh about?
It is about a teenage boy who has a love affair with an older young woman, Marthe, during the First World War, while her fiancé is away at the front. The boy tells the story himself.
Is The Devil in the Flesh a true story?
It is a novel, but it draws on Radiguet's own youth and experiences near the river Marne. It was published in 1923, when he was about twenty, and he died the same year.
Why was The Devil in the Flesh scandalous?
Readers were shocked by a love affair between a schoolboy and a young woman engaged to a soldier, shown while the war was still fresh in memory. The narrator also shows little guilt.
What does the title The Devil in the Flesh mean?
The French title, Le Diable au corps, is an idiom for being driven by an uncontrollable urge or passion. It points to the force of desire that drives the young lovers.
Is The Devil in the Flesh hard to read?
No. It is written in clear, plain sentences. The narrator's cool, ironic voice asks you to judge him for yourself.