Fruits Of The Earth

During the author's travels he meets Menalcas a caricature of Oscar Wilde who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy. Later Fruits of the Earth written in 1935 during Gide's short-lived spell of communism reaffirms the doctrine of the earlier book. But now he sees happiness not as freedom but a submission to heroism. In a series of 'Encounters' Gide describes a Negro tramp a drowned child a lunatic and other casualties of life. These reconcile him to suffering death and religion causing him to insist that 'today's Utopia' be 'tomorrow's reality'.