Ferdinand Bardamu is the protagonist of

Louis-Ferdinand Céline Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( , ) was a French novelist, polemicist and physician. His first novel ''Journey to the End of the Night'' (1932) won the '' Pr ...

's 1932 novel ''

Journey to the End of the Night ''Journey to the End of the Night'' (french: Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932) is the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work follows the adventures of Ferdinand Bardamu in the World War I, colonial Africa, the Un ...

'' (''Voyage au bout de la nuit''). The hero's first name, Ferdinand, is shared with Céline, the author/narrator for whom he acts as a surrogate. His surname, Bardamu, is derived from the French words ''Barda''—the "pack" carried by

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

soldiers—and ''mu'', the

past participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

of the verb ''mouvoir'', meaning to move. As the novel progresses, circumstances compel Bardamu to give up his "baggage" of

conventional morality Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Kohlberg began work on this topic as a psychology graduate student at the University of ...

and the

optimism Optimism is an attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled w ...

of youth.

Footnotes

The two would later be combined as "Louis Ferdinand Bardamu" by the narrator Raphael of Modiano's ''La Place de L'étoile'' (1968).

Citations

References

* * * Characters in French novels of the 20th century Louis-Ferdinand Céline Author surrogates Literary characters introduced in 1932 {{novel-char-stub