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Essay on How is Ch'en Ta Erh a stranger in Man's Fate?
Malraux, André: 1901-76, French man of letters and political figure. An intellectual with a broad knowledge of archaeology, art history, and anthropology. Malraux led a remarkably adventurous life. He traveled to Indochina looking for Khmer statuary; later witnessed the struggle in China between Communists and Nationalists, helped to organize the Republican air force in the Spanish civil war, and was a founder of the World League against Anti-Semitism.
A French tank commander during World War II, he was captured by the Germans but escaped and became a resistance leader. Malraux served as minister of information under Charles de Gaulle; an enthusiastic adherent of de Gaulle, he became minister of cultural affairs in 1959. s
In Man's Fate, Andre Malraux examines the compelling forces that lead individuals to join a greater cause. Forced into a life of contempt, Ch'en portrays the man of action in the early phases of the Chinese Revolution. He dedicates himself to the communist cause. It is something greater than himself, a phenomenal concept that he has fused into.
It is something for which he will give his life. How did this devotion come about? A combination of his personality, his interior life, as well as society's influence, molded him into a terrorist. Ch'en is self-destructive; he is controlled by his religion of terrorism and his fascination with death. He is representative of the dedicated soldier who begins as a "sacrificial priest" and ends as a martyr.
After all, the ideologies of communism and terrorism were practically a religion to those involved in the revolution. An examination of Ch'en's past gives us an idea of how he formed his beliefs, and fell into a state of isolation. At an early age, his parents were murdered in the pillage of Kalagan. In addition, at age twenty- four.....
