ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the problem of seeing clearly into the experience of the Second World War through the example of two of the best-known writers who lived through the period, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The aspect of lucidity discusses the possibility of settling, knowing, and narrating one's past. The wartime writings of Sartre and Beauvoir and their post-war works which refer to the war traverse and describe traumatic times, but they are not what would normally be called trauma texts. The texts of Beauvoir and Sartre give some credibility to the accusation that the Occupation was, for them, rather gentle. Their situation and their texts can be contrasted with those of two other major post-war figures, Marguerite Duras and Robert Altelme, who were married at the time of the war. The documents quoted by Gilbert Joseph suggest that, lurking behind Beauvoir's almost cheerful text, there is something potentially much more dangerous.
