Approaching liberation felt like returning sensation after numbness

Evidence

By early summer of 1944, as Allied forces moved towards Paris, everyone knew that freedom was near. The growing emotion was hard to take, as Beauvoir noted; it was like the painful tingling that comes when sensation returns after numbness. There was also much fear of what the Nazis might do as they retreated. Life continued to be hard: merely finding enough to eat became more difficult than ever. But the faint sound of bombs and artillery brought hope. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 519

Categorization

• XREF: The anesthesia/return-of-sensation metaphor for freedom connects to the numbness themes in postwar existentialist writing about bad faith and authentic engagement.