ABSTRACT
The bulk of the socio-political philosophy of du Gard is contained in Les Thibault. This is a huge novel-a ‘roman fleuve’—somewhat like Tolstoi’s War and Peace. Martin du Gard planned the structure of this book while resting for a few weeks at Verger d’Augy in the spring of 1920. The time span of the novel was to cover a period of forty years, comprising some twelve or thirteen distinctive phases. He originally planned Les Thibault to be the history of two brothers, different in character, but having certain inherited similarities. Martin du Gard admitted that this theme gave him the opportunity of expressing two contradictory aspects of his own nature; namely, independence and a tendency to revolt against conformity, on the one hand, and an inherent love of order, balance and moderation on the other.1
