undertaking that off and on would occupy the next decade of his life.^41
As usual, he was engaged in many other tasks at the same time. During
the next two years he would keep his commitment to Poulain by produ-
cing a series of essays in contemporary literary criticism for theNouvelle
Revue Franc ̧aise(chiefly revisions of his public lectures delivered in Le
Havre); he would write “The Childhood of a Leader,” the last of the
short stories to be gathered along with the title piece, “The Wall,” in a
collection that appeared in January of 1939 ; and would publish,Sketch
for a Theory of the Emotionsin December of 1939. This kind of multi-
tasking would continue for the rest of his life so long as his health
permitted and even when it did not, as we shall see.
IfNauseawas originally conceived as a philosophical treatise in diary
form, what came to be calledThe Roads of Freedomwas a novel from the
start. Written out of his own experience of the political and social scene
in France during the late 1930 s and early 1940 s, this work was a quasi-
historical piece. And while it carried the usual philosophical dimension –
its main protagonist is a 34 -year-old high school teacher of philosophy in
search of authenticity – it assumed a psychological and political perspec-
tive on current events: the gathering storm of the Second World War, the
fall of France, and transport of the French soldiers to a POW camp
inside Germany – events of which Sartre had first-hand knowledge. It is
as if he were looking out his window and into the souls of his contem-
poraries caught up by seemingly irresistible sociopolitical forces – a view
that must have shocked “the solitary man” and given pause to the
nascent existentialist.
The first volume,The Age of Reason, follows the trail of Mathieu
Delarue, another solitary man, as he desperately bargains with friends
and family for funds to procure an abortion for Marcelle, his pregnant
(^41) The Age of Reason, completed in 1941 but published along with volumeii,The Reprieve,in
1945 ,Troubled Sleep( 1948 ) along with fragments of the unfinished fourth volume, the first
part of which appeared as “A Strange Friendship” in the November–December issue of his
journalLes Temps Modernes. The second part, “The Last Chance,” along with fragments of
other sections appeared in reconstructed form inL’Œuvre romanesque(Gallimard, 1981 ).
Sartre seems to have ceased working on the fourth volume around 1952 , though he hinted to
Beauvoir that other volumes might follow (see Simone de Beauvoir,Force of Circumstance,
trans. Richard Howard [New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965 ] 215 ). These parts and
fragments of the fourth volume have appeared in English translation by Craig Vasey as
The Last Chance(London: Continuum, 2009 ).
The Roads to Freedom 155