Des personnages en proie à la solitude dans Juste la fin du monde et En Finir avec Eddy Bellegueule

Abstract

Human relationships, and particularly the relationships between family members, have always been among the dominant themes in literature and have been dealt with, in different periods, and in similar or different contexts repeatedly. As the world has evolved, so have the views on this subject and themes such as family dynamics, individual isolation and rootlessness have emerged as the constitutive elements and/or main problematic of some contemporary literary works. With this in mind, one of the contemporary names in French literature, Édouard Louis, in his autobiographical novel En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule, in which he describes in detail his childhood and his neighborhood, tells the story of a child who is completely isolated - or forced into isolation - from his family and his environment, and who is in search of the realization of his identity. A few years before the publication of Édouard Louis's novel, Jean-Luc Lagarce, one of the emblematic figures of contemporary French theatre, tells the story of the character Louis in his play Juste la fin du monde, who also experiences this isolation in his past and consequently leaves his family, but ends up returning to his family to confront it instead. In this study, we will seek to examine, by comparing the two works mentioned, not only the theme of 'individual isolation' but also its possible causes and consequences; and we will aim, after making a thematic comparison and identifying similarities and differences, to find out how and why the two authors place this theme at the center of their narrative.