120 Days of Sodom is, in a word, disgusting. While many books have been banned or forbidden over the centuries, this one, if any, deserves to be so. Some texts, though controversial, can help readers understand varying viewpoints and the context that frames them; however, it is hard to understand what 120 Days of Sodom brings to any culture or adds to any viewpoint. The remaining 100 days may hold some redeeming qualities, but the first 20 present the reader with an account of the most heinous sexual crimes and deviance imaginable. The only conceivable benefit to this text would be to remind the doubtful reader how intensely words on a page can make us feel (in this case, nausea). There is little plot development thus far, the story being wholly described in a schedule provided at the beginning of the book. Figurative language is used often in metaphors and similies, nearly all of which describe sex acts and the like. There is no underlying meaning, no moral or theme to speak of. It is strange to read a text that wears its blackened heart so openly on its sleeve. Predictability and disgust seem to be the only constants in de Sade’s story; there are no twists or mysteries to speak of other than the constant horror of the question of how the many inhabitants of Selligny are to be treated next.
The reader must live with the weighty reality that there will be no redemption arch for any character, no exciting climax, no salvation for the sexual prisoners of the Lords of Sodom. Though the remaining days are unknown, the current state of the plot seems to suggest that the Lords will continue their sexual and criminal conquest without question or retaliation from anyone, and will eventually complete their journey, victorious, though with casualties of the body and mind (though some prisoners will survive, the mental onslaught they experience will surely ruin their minds). Truly, de Sade accomplished his quest to write the most extreme book of all time.