SF-DQ ~ Appendix

10. Consider Irène Némirovsky’s plan for the next part of Suite Française (in the appendix). What else do you think could happen to the characters?

SF-DQ ~ Dolce (Occupation), Ch 1-22

6. Suite Française is a unique pair of novels. Which of the two parts of Suite Française do you prefer? Which structural organization did you find more effective: the short chapters and multiple focus of "Storm in June" or the more restricted approach of "Dolce"?

7. The aristocratic Mme de Montmort believed: “What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, but the way they hold their knife and fork.” How do the rich, poor, and the middle classes view one another? How do they help or hinder one another? Do the characters identify themselves by class or nationality?

8. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers — from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants — cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration. Each relationship is distorted by the allegiances of war. What happens during a war when someone who might have been your friend is now declared your enemy?

9. The lovers in "Dolce" (the occupation) question whether the needs of the individual or the community should take priority. Lucille imagines that “in five, or ten, or twenty years” this problem will have been replaced by others. To what extent, if at all, has this proved the case?

Week 2~Storm in June~DQ

“ The Resistance”

• To discuss the issue of the French Resistance appropriately, we need to look at how the French themselves perceived it. They would have to consider whether their memories of past events are intact or have been filtered to repress or retain selected facts and behaviors. Part of what is now seen as the “myth of French resistance” became a psychological strategy that the people used to balance conscience with self-perspective.

• As a way of dealing with the humiliation of defeat, the French appeared to take the surrender in stride and went about the business of trying to survive. To maintain a degree of honor, they began the serious business of “forgetting” and adopted en masse the “national myth” – that the majority of French citizens resisted the enemy in a variety of ways. They looked to outside influences as a place to lay blame for the tragic Vichy years. Political figures like Charles de Gaulle, head of the post-war provisional French government, did nothing to change this misconception.

• One impact of such thinking led the French to come down hard on suspected collaborators. The women were paraded through town with their heads shaved and in some cases with swastikas painted on their breasts. The men were simply executed.

• It usually takes writers and historians a long time to gain a proper perspective of momentous historical events. It is an arduous process to digest and interpret the actions, feelings, and responses of all the documented witness accounts. But Némirovsky was not to be intimidated into waiting. She knew she had no time. She wrote her story as it happened; she wrote as she experienced it, and she interpreted and made judgments even as she observed them.

4. Since the war, the French have lived with the myth of a valiant French Resistance movement in the face of a devastating German attack and occupation. This myth exploded in the late twentieth century and was shown to be false. Yet, Némirovsky wrote, “And to think that no one will know, that there will be such a conspiracy of lies that all this will be transformed into yet another glorious page in the history of France.” (p.143) How was Némirovsky able to predict that the world would come to this conclusion? What other predictions does she make in her novel?

5. The Resistance movement grew better organized after 1941, and there were many positive actions performed by the French. Némirovsky has been criticized for being too hard on the French and too easy on the Germans. Considering the timing of this novel and Némirovsky’s experiences, what is your reaction to this comment?

The Authors Purpose

How important is it for the reader to know the author's purpose in writing a book?

How important is knowing something about the author's background and philosophy?

Do we need to know more about Irene N.'s life in order to understand her point of view?

Week 1~Storm in June~DQ

Main Characters
The Péricands
Charlotte Péricand
The Elder Monsieur Péricand
Philippe Péricand
Hubert Péricand
Corte
Gabriel Corte
The Michauds
Jean-Marie Michaud
The Villagers
Lucile Angellier
Madame Angellier
Madeleine Sabarie
Benoît Sabarie
The Viscountess
The Germans
Lieutenant Bruno von Falk
Kurt Bonnet

Némirovsky wrote this book in the years between 1940 and 1942. She recorded for posterity what she saw around her – the events and people’s reactions to them. This novel is a close-range, eyewitness account of war. Némirovsky explores the kinds of decisions people make in a time of war that demonstrate their character. She does this with a heightened understanding of human behavior and an instinctively literary mind that utilizes some techniques and methods that will be used only years after she is gone.

It is 1940 and the Germans are poised to enter Paris but have not yet arrived. In anticipation of the Germans’ arrival, the people of Paris pack up to leave. There is no thought of staying, no thought of setting up a defense. Panic and chaos is the order of the day. Némirovsky paints a satiric and sad portrait of the Parisians, as they step all over themselves and others in their attempt to escape the unimaginable – the destruction of their beloved Paris: an event that never happened.

1. It takes a long time for historians and writers to come objectively to terms with a catastrophic historical event, yet Némirovsky presents just that – an on-the-spot description and interpretation of how the French behaved in the years between 1940 and 1942.

Has Némirovsky presented a fair picture? Has she written a journalistic account of the time or a story of fiction? How have her own personal experiences biased her writing? Is this novel a contribution to the library of wartime literature?

2. Suite Française is an unfinished work, and as such it may be criticized as unpolished, especially when held up to the measure of other classic novels written in the past and present century accounting for the same time and events.

Consider in your reading so far whether or not you consider what Irène Némirovsky has written to be a tragically classic story or if she is merely a tragic figure in her own story.

3. In, Storm in June, Némirovsky explores the nature of families who escape Paris at the start of the invasion – the Péricand family, the writer Corte and his mistress, the Michauds, and some other individuals. These smaller groups, in turn, represent the thousands of people who found themselves in a state of upheaval that June of 1940. Once she sets her characters on the road, she steps back and allows them to act on their own – for better, in just a few instances, or for worse, in many cases.

a. Do you find yourself identifying with any of the actions or behaviors of these main payers in the beginning of the first raid and initial invasion of Paris?

b. If so who?

c. If not how do you think you would have reacted?