Sébastien Roch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sébastien Roch | |
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| Author | Octave Mirbeau |
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| Original title | Sébastien Roch |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Subject(s) | child sexual abuse by priests |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Charpentier |
| Publication date | April 1890 |
| OCLC | 23394078 |
Sébastien Roch is a novel written by the French journalist, novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, and published by Charpentier in 1890.
English translation : Sébastien Roch, Dedalus, « Empire of the senses », 2000, 266 pages (ISBN : 1873982437).
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[edit] Plot summary
That is the emotional story of "the murder of a child’s soul" by a Jesuit rapist, set in the private school of Saint-François-Xavier in Vannes (Brittany), where Mirbeau spent four painful years as a pupil, before being expelled, at the age of fifteen, in suspicious circumstances. The young and innocent Sébastien, whose christian name is significant, is seduced, then raped, by the diabolical Father de Kern. The novelist studies the destructive consequences of this trauma.
At the end, Sébastien, as a soldier who doesn’t want to kill anybody, is killed in absurd circumstances during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War : the Army finishes the destruction task begun by the Catholic Church.
[edit] Commentary
Octave Mirbeau denounces the child sexual abuses and the impunity of the rapists, especially when they are priests : for the first time, he breaks a lasting taboo.
But, for him, what is called « education », within the context of family, school and church, is also a dangerous violation of the children mind. Rather than a Bildungsroman, i.e a novel of self-cultivation, Sébastien Roch is a novel of self-destruction.
