En Cavale!

‘Papillon’ and Life as an Escape

Book Cover Courtesy of A Cappella Books / Harper Perennial

Unjustly imprisoned. Trapped in a brutal penal system. Locked in a cage for years. Papillon is a man determined on freedom. A man whom nothing will dissuade. A man for whom escape (cavale) is a way of life. And a man for whom telling his story will be the best revenge.

Such, at least, was my memory of Papillon — one of that considerable number of books read several times as a teenager and then lost during the years and moves after college. Memories colored by the Steve McQueen/Dustin Hoffman movie (a reasonably faithful, though necessarily much abridged, version of the story), so that my Papillon has both the face of McQueen and some of the same cocky independence and cool humor the actor embodied.

I came across a copy last month at a used bookstore and reread it for the first time in decades. Much of what I found there as a young man remains. The escapes lack the precision and cleverness of the Hollywood stories we are used to and gain in verisimilitude and intensity because of it. The writing is matter-of-fact. The descriptions of the casual brutality of prison life, the nature of the cons, and the terrible ordeal that is solitary confinement are all captured with authority.

It is only the man that suffers by comparison.

For the Papillon I read now is more of a braggart than I remember. A man who centers himself in every story. Who seems always to be special, singled out, uniquely respected and casually authoritative. Of course, there really are a few men like this — men who seem to carry an aura about them that others simply respond to. But is Henri Charrière (Papillon) that man? On this re-reading, I had my doubts, feeling more like someone listening to a fisherman describe his latest catch. He is a man whose word I would not necessarily trust and whose stories begin to feel more like borrowed clothes than a natural fit.

Yet whatever share real-life Charrière has in the adventures of Papillon, what shone through in re-reading was life “En Cavale” — the idea of escape. That Papillon hates the penal system is clear. That he covets revenge against those who shipped him to this worse than purgatory is obvious. Yet he is neither a true campaigner for justice nor a Count of Monte Cristo consumed by a thirst for revenge. Whether justly convicted or not, he is, after all, a professional criminal. And while nothing would excuse the extraordinary and pointless brutality of the solitary confinement he describes, for most of the professional cons on the island, life is perfectly acceptable. They have sunk into an existence as comfortable to them as the routine of a factory worker. A little labor. A lot of gambling and black-market trading, the occasional fight, and even a little sex. If you don’t try to escape, you don’t end up in solitary. It’s a narrow life but one that most prisoners accept.

Not Papillon.

Escape is his life, and his identity. “I’m a Cavale man,” he tells the others. In his mind, there are really only two kinds of prisoners — the one’s willing to try an escape and the rest. And, of course, it is the “Cavale Men” who deserve respect.

Papillon, the novel, is really nothing but an endless series of escapes, even when escape seems pointless. When Papillon first makes it to freedom, he ends up with a native tribe and a life that seems to provide him with everything he might desire. Yet still he flees.

When he achieves freedom after his coconut boat escape, he must again leave for reasons hardly given and once more finds himself in prison. In his early days, he imagines returning to France and enacting a terrible revenge. Gradually the years erode that desire. And while he desperately wants out, why is a bit of a mystery. He as much as admits that there was nothing worthwhile missing from his life with the Indians and both he and his fellow inmates consider his leaving as foolish. Yet he has no desire to go back. Not once does he contemplate returning to the two wives/sisters he’s left behind and the idyllic existence he describes. Nor does he give much shape to what kind of life he wants or intends to live. That he does not expect to return to a life of professional crime is about the only aspect of his future that he seems set on — and one wonders how seriously we are supposed to take that. Like the ritual protestations of innocence from convicted cons, the pledge to go straight sounds like just another gameday cliché.

Papillon is not so much the story of a life redeemed by escape as of a life defined by it.

There is no convincing Road to Damascus moment for Papillon. There are at least 3 times in the book when Papillon seems to find God/righteousness — but that’s several times too many for the reader to take it seriously. I once had a professor who liked to say that if a philosopher gives you three arguments for something it’s probably because he doesn’t think any of them are convincing. If you have to find God multiple times, have you really ever found God at all? The Papillon who wins through to freedom at the end of book is noticeably more mature than the butterfly who starts the journey to French Guinea, but he isn’t obviously a different man.

All this, however, makes for a better not a worse read and for a more universal and modern story.

To read Papillon as an indictment of the French penal system is fine, but like most such indictments it cannot live beyond its moment. Nobody wants to sit through the novels of Upton Sinclair. Whatever art such books contain is consumed in their ideological fire.

Yet while Papillon’s flaws as a writer and man stood out more clearly to me reading from the vantage of whatever wisdom many decades of experience provide, the story felt as fresh and powerful as ever. The secret to the appeal of Papillon is the essence of Papillon himself — the idea of escape.

Most of us are not threatened with prison, much less with the manufactured hell of darkness that the authorities devised for extra punishment. Like Papillon, though, we yearn to escape. Most of us know not what life we want, yet search for a life different than what we live. To be En Cavale — to be dissatisfied with life as lived — to think of ourselves as ones who are trying to escape? Who is not among that group? Is there a person who fires up a Medium account without somehow indulging in that desire? Oh, to be a writer instead of a teacher, a gig worker or a manager!

I lived in Los Angeles for many years and one of the things I loved about LA (and yes, there were quite a few) was that everyone wanted to be something else. That waiter really is (of course) trying to be an actor. That temp is trying to be a model. Your manager wants to make movies. They are all En Cavale men and women. And I found I liked them better than those who simply accept whatever it is they are.

It is, in many respects, like having imposter syndrome. There is a gap between how we must pretend to be to succeed and how we actually are. Failing to recognize that gap is a bug not a feature. If you are selling yourself in today’s world and you don’t feel like a bit of pretender, you’re probably a jerk or a fool.

To live en cavale in our world is, as it was for Papillon in prison, a badge of honor. It is a recognition that our lives are missing something. That we lack value and values. And if you are not looking to escape — however ideal your life seems on the outside — you’re likely missing something important. Nor is this a matter of our world being so different from Papillon’s that our freedom is as bad as his prison. Papillon is en cavale in the most modern of ways — he always wants out. It just so happens that his story is compelling because his bars are real.

It is, in this view, a strength of the book that Papillon doesn’t have a true road to Damascus moment. That he doesn’t become all that different. That prison doesn’t give him an unquenchable thirst for revenge or a repugnance for dishonesty. What prison gives Papillon is a reason to live his identity. To be an En Cavale man. And the book gives us no reason to doubt that the happiest times of his life take place in those precious moments when he has first escaped from the confines of the prisons that contain him.

Can we not all recognize the sweetness of those first few moments when we have stopped just thinking about it and are truly en cavale? It is a sweetness just as delightful, no matter what the life we flee is like.