Page:On Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk.pdf/16



Translating bad food to farts and then to shared jokes can happen, but only if we are fully human and not overwhelmed by a sense of our own importance. The jail may stink of the shit bucket, but perhaps that odour is associated with the sense of a great communal equality and humanity only available where no one can pretend to be more important that he, in fact, is. That may be why it is typical of inmates in the jail to share experiences and to sing—not doleful tunes of their common misery but all sorts of energetic songs which celebrate their moment of companionship.

[Incidentally, the above passage is a useful place to insert the parenthetic observation that while Hašek’s style is not noted for its descriptive power, there are momentmoments [sic] when the particular details of a setting are especially evocative—there’s a sense that the narrator has been there and seen what he is writing about (as in the details of the lamp and the bucket in the above quotation)]

THE GOOD SOLDIER

But for all the above-mentioned features of the satirical style, the fame of this novel undoubtedly arises most obviously from the central character himself. Švejk is one of those rare characters in fiction who acquire cultural status as heroes of folklore, above and beyond their own stories (in English literature, for example, the supreme example is Shakespeare’s Falstaff ), largely because, however convincing they may or may not be as consistent characters in the text,