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Broch's novel trilogy, The Sleepwalkers, has a pattern of apocalyptici magery and symbolism which appears at all important junctures of the work and permeates much of its texture. This pattern merges with a pessimistic theory of history, entitled “Disintegration of Values,” and it converges on a hostile portrayal of the German revolution of 1918. The essential function of the apocalyptic symbols is to frighten the reader into an attitude of acceptance toward the philosophy of the work. This philosophy contains an embryonic “theory of revolution” whose main thrust is counterrevolutionary because revolutions are viewed as manifestations of irrational impulses directed against rational institutions. The Epilogue, the prophetic message of the work, projects a curious double or triple vision: (1) apocalyptic fear of the destruction of values by Communism, (2) chiliastic hope for the rebirth of values with the coming of a Messiah (Führer), and (3) a Nietzschean faith in the eternal recurrence of history. Broch's entire oeuvre is apocalyptic or chiliastic with several modifications. He shares this tendency with many writers in the twentieth century, the new apocalyptic age.

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