Tension entre mémoire et oubli dans Le Rapport de Brodeck de Philippe Claudel
The Tension Between Memory and Oblivion in Le Rapport de Brodeck by Philippe Claudel

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to analyze the conflictual situation experienced by Brodeck and the other characters in the novel caught between memory and oblivion. In fact, Philippe Claudel's novel, The Brodeck Report, tells of the murder of a man, a foreigner, the Anderer, in a village located in the mountains, an event that occurs at the end of the Second World War, when the character relates the facts. The inhabitants of the village assign a young man, Brodeck, to investigate and write a report on the circumstances of the death of this stranger. In addition, Claudel’s novel also deals with the deportation of a main character to a concentration camp during World War II. It is precisely a memory linked to concentration camps. This tension can be articulated in the division between memory and oblivion: remembering the past linked to the murder of this foreigner in the village, the deportation of a category of the population to the extermination camps at the risk of 'accuse certain villagers or simply forget about this troubled past in order to preserve calm in the village. Faced with this dilemma of the characters, what will they choose? Remember or forget?

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