An allegorical-ideological trinity: the beast is dead — the second World War among the animals (1944)

Abstract

ABSTRACT During 1941, while France was being crushed under the iron fist of the Third Reich, the cartoonists Edmond François Calvo, and Victor Dancette began work on La Bête est Morte – La guerre Mondiale Chez Les Animaux [The Beast is Dead: The World War Among the Animals]. The two, secretly wrote and drew a cartoon epic that reimagined the history of the French nation during the war and cast animals as the warring nations. During 1944, a few months after the liberation, the first part of the work was published under the title Quand la Bête est Déchaînée [When the Beast is Unleashed]. The second part appeared a year later, as Quand la Bête est Terrassée [When the Beast is Defeated]. This article presents a literary and ideological discussion of both parts of La Bête est Morte, which is also the first graphic novel written to allegorically depict the Second World War and the Holocaust. The article also examines ways in which La Bête est Morte took part in the establishment and preservation of the Gaullist narrative and of the French collective memory of the war and its events.