The Ogre may be one of the most disturbing books ever written. It follows a simple-minded man into the heart of the Jewish Holocaust and dramatizes his confusion so thoroughly that the reader may find it impossible to escape. By the time Abel Tiffauges realizes the terrible extent of his predicament, he is lost—and the reader is lost with him. This accomplishment accounts for the book’s reputation as Tournier’s most powerful novel but also explains the dismay it has caused.
As a sickly child, Abel was placed by his parents in a foster home called St. Christopher’s. By the time the reader meets him as an adult, he has developed into a strong but emotionally underdeveloped mechanic whose interests in children and photography are easily misinterpreted. When a young girl incorrectly identifies him as a molester, he is arrested, but he escapes prosecution because France is mobilizing for war. He eventually finds himself working with carrier pigeons in the French army but is captured by the Germans and assigned to a labor camp.
Abel comes to love wartime Germany, a nation whose many rules and regulations leave no room for the troubling ambiguity of civilian life in France. From ditch digger he is promoted to driver and eventually to gamekeeper on Field Marshal Hermann Göring’s hunting preserve, Rominten. He discerns the elements of a grand plan in everything that has happened to him and is convinced that events, large and small,...
(The entire section is 554 words.)