Michel Tournier is one of the great figures of the contemporary French novel. The subject of the child runs through almost Tournier’s all works. Tournier makes the child a marvelous, triumphant being. This ideal model of the child, which is inspired by Rousseau’s conception, designates childhood as a fullness of being and embodies an original innocence. This conception of the child is also well developed in eastern philosophy, which considers the child as a representation of strong vitality, spiritual simplicity, the desire for ignorance, the ideal paradigm of life. For the characters in Tournier’s works, the state of childhood is an ideal way of life and a fulfillment of being; they dream of returning to this state of childlike innocence in order to attain an ideal of happiness.
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