Yellow Tapers for Paris
Bruce Marshall
 The crushing 1940 defeat of France (an event the author lived through) is the subject of this novel. Marshall implies that France lost its soul and was itself more responsible for its defeat than Germany. We meet Bigou, the protagonist, in 1934. He is an honest, hard-working, but irreligious and immoral accountant, employed by a successful industrial firm in Paris. He is mildly troubled that his firm expends considerable effort conniving to avoid paying its legitimate taxes. Conversations with accountants and employees of other companies lead Bigou to realize that most of the business enterprises of the time in France are behaving similarly, The novel gives us a picture of Bigou’s life. The reader is introduced to his family, sulky, plucky daughter Odette and sickly wife Marie, friends, his coworkers and other people he meets in his business life. The author endeavors to show that money and pleasure were the main goals sought with any sincerity. Even religion, when it did exist, wasn’t much more than an outward display. Bigou does come to believe that the local priest is one of the few people he knows who exhibits integrity. The “petit bourgeois” in the novel are shabby and bewildered as they assist helplessly at their nation’s funeral, but they stand in brilliant contrast to the insatiable greed and craftiness of the wealthy. Marshall clearly believes that France lost its virtue, especially among its elites. He even implies that the leaders of the Church were more interested in status and materialism than spirituality. The novel indicates that the common people, deprived of the just rewards of their labor, and without worthy spiritual direction, became trapped in immorality, and were spiritually and physically impoverished.