Abstract
This article analyses the symbolic meaning of the Moon in two bande dessinée books from the Tintin series, Hergé’s Destination Moon (Objectif Lune, 1953) and its sequel Explorers on the Moon (On a Marché sur la Lune, 1954). It argues that these two volumes stand out in the series for their graphic, narrative and philosophical emphasis on both intellectual achievement and physical death. The Moon, as a goal of modern science and a traditional artistic symbol, is made to celebrate the human mind. But Hergé also makes it a dangerous no man’s land, where human beings are made to understand the limitations of their physical abilities. The Moon emphasises the distortion between human dreams of grandeur and the concrete impossibility of their realisation, and the threats they pose to corporeality. As a result, the article suggests that the Moon trip can be seen as a modern re-enactment of the mythological journey to Hell, as the works of the human mind are constantly thwarted by the risk of physical death.
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Notes
All translations of French critical studies are mine.
‘Bande dessinée’, literally “drawn strip”, is the name given to Belgian and French graphic novels. The term is used in this essay instead of its English-American equivalent, ‘comics’, which bears different connotations of tone, and suggests a different tradition from the Franco-Belgian one.
References
Primary Sources
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Hergé. (2002/1953). Destination Moon. (Trans: Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner, 1959). London: Egmont.
Hergé. (2002/1954). Explorers on the Moon. (Trans: Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner, 1959). London: Egmont.
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Journal and Magazine Articles
Duhamel, Patrice. (2005). Objectif Lune and On a Marché sur la Lune. Le Figaro Hors-Série: Tintin, Reporter du Siècle, pp. 34–36.
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Clémentine Beauvais took her MPhil in Children’s Literature at Cambridge University, after completing her BA in Education and English. She is hoping to do a PhD on the impact of ethical children’s books for children’s literature criticism. This is the author’s first submission to an academic journal. Her first two books for children have been published in 2010, in France, her native country.
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Beauvais, C. “A Nightmare Land, A Place of Death”: An Exploration of the Moon as a Motif in Hergé’s Destination Moon (1953) and Explorers on the Moon (1954). Child Lit Educ 41, 251–259 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-010-9110-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-010-9110-3