What We're Reading: 'All Men Are Mortal' by Simone de Beauvoir

"Is there any meaning behind a life that never ends?" Simone de Beauvoir asks difficult existential questions in this week's reading pick by Jonathon Yu. 

I dream that there are no more men...They're all dead. The earth is white. The moon is still in the sky and it lights up an earth that's completely white. I’m alone with the mouse.

Is there any meaning behind a life that never ends? Simone de Beauvoir explores this idea in her existentialist novel All Men Are Mortal.

Set in 20th-century Paris, the novel explores the life of the undying Raymond Fosca, a 13th-century Italian royal who, over the course of his centuries-long lifespan, grows disenchanted with humanity. Originally lured by the prospect of creating a utopia for his kingdom of Carmona, he drinks a potion of immortality offered to him by a dying old man. As time passes, Raymond grows disillusioned by his inability to make lasting changes in the world and to connect with human beings, whose actions he sees as “trivial” relative to his immortal lifespan. He is confronted with the cyclical nature of the human experience: to be born, to live, to die, over and over again, until everything becomes the same in his eyes. The faces of those in the present become blurred with those he once knew centuries ago.

Raymond’s outlook on life is contrasted with that of Regina, a Parisian actress who is obsessed with her attempts to be remembered by a world that will live on after her death. She collects little trinkets and mementoes of core periods of her life. Their interaction throughout the novel highlights the contrasting ideas behind these two characters: Raymond’s immortality renders all human experiences meaningless and repetitive, while Regina seeks to find meaning even in the smallest of moments, knowing her time on Earth is finite.

One of the strongest moments for me was Raymond’s mention of the mouse in the closing pages, a callback to the moments when he was still mortal. Before drinking the potion, he decides to test for poison by giving some to a mouse. The potion works on both the mouse and him, and at the end of the novel, he describes his nightmares to Regina; one day, everything else on Earth will be dead, and he will be alone with that immortal mouse.

Ultimately, de Beauvoir urges us to question the meaning behind our own fleeting lives and how the finitude of existence is perhaps the greatest gift given to us.