Satire of Human Condition in Du Hérisson by Éric Chevillard

Extract

[...] This is a phenomenon of hyperhypotaxis. This stylistic device allows blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy, staging a comedic hallucination. The Earth is evoked twice through periphrastic occurrences. "The smooth globe", i.e., the globe as an object, does not refer to reality per se because the Earth is represented as a miniature and tangible. This symbolizes the human obstinacy to grasp everything physically and intellectually. Moreover, the qualifier "smooth" is antithetical to the prickly nature of the animals supposed to represent the world. [...]

[...] We note a weak absence of punctuation, there is no comma. This makes us feel the brutal deprivation of the poetic-narrative drive, compared to the memories evoked previously, let us recall the parembole "(this scene also summarizes the whole story, let's not talk about it anymore)", regarding an event that has again resulted in failure, with Militrissa. The impersonal phrase "it's raining" contrasts with the joyful and sunny memory of Tunisia. The rain is connoted by grayness, and symbolically monotony, sadness. [...]

[...] Once stripped of all its artificialities, such as astronomy or geopolitics, man is reduced to his trivial nature, which drives him to violence to ensure his own survival. Animal behavior is revealing of all our institutions adorned with erudite names, to camouflage and sublimate what they say most primitive about the human condition. This reflection on man through the prism of the animal recalls the science fiction novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle. The inversion of the relationships between men and apes allows for the criticism of human flaws and highlights how intelligence and civilization do not exempt man from his bad instincts. [...]

[...] The figure of astronauts observing and photographing from the sky is ridiculous, confirming the distance between man and the understanding of the true world, light-years away from him. The subordinate clause about "goldfish" and "butterflies", small animals that arouse childish fascination, attests that man does not evolve in his way of approaching the world between childhood and adulthood. Moreover, recall that domestic goldfish swim around in circles in a bowl. Chevillard develops a subtle isotopy of the "ball" throughout the text through a sometimes implicit extended metaphor. The incise, or epanorthosis suppose", is again a humorous intervention by the narrator in this fanciful setting, mocking human attitude. [...]

[...] The completive subordinate clause of the proposition am surprised that" is extended to the next paragraph, to highlight a comedic ending. The assertion that man has not yet reached the Earth is very surprising and ironic, concluding the satire, and concluding that despite his empirical and technological approaches (building rockets . man ultimately knows nothing about the world around him. We also note an inversion between the Earth and the Moon through this representation of space conquest. The Earth would be a space to be conquered (as we have conquered the Moon) when we already live on it. [...]