Page:On Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk.pdf/22

 Hašek presents it, acts to warp, suppress, and deny common humanity).

Švejk, of course, is forced to deal with many uncomfortable situations—notably his frequent visits to various jails. He endures them all, but not with Stoic passivity or resentment or dreams of freedom. He brings to each encounter an unflagging vitality and interest. Jail for him is another unique experience, and if the wood on the bed this time has been planed, well, that’s something to celebrate (37). He needs very little to feel content, free of anxiety, and interested in his surroundings, particularly if there are other people there with whom he can share a conversation or a song. Švejk’s immediate physical surroundings are always a source of immense interest to him (no wonder he cannot help pulling the emergency alarm on the train).

The most obvious means Švejk uses to cope is to talk—he loves engaging in conversation with anyone and always has ready his amazing store of narratives about people he has known or heard about or invented. Given the chance, he can simply overwhelm listeners in a hurry and reduce them to frustration. Here again there’s something of an ambiguity surrounding this habit of impromptu story telling: Is it just his natural predisposition or something more subtle, a deliberate tactic to get his own way—as Švejk tells Lieutenant Lukáš, “you must talk to people, sir, and go on talking to them until the customer gets completely crazy”?

There may even be a sense here, especially in the above remark, that Švejk is able to deal with the official lies which prop up the bureaucracy (and even declare his faith in them) because in his civilian life he was such a successful liar himself. He invented genealogies designed to dress up canine mutts in the finery of some noble pedigree and spent his time trying to persuade people to accept ugly mongrels as thoroughbred prizes. Smothering them with his narratives is for him a sales tactic. So he understands better than anyone the deceptive power of stories and is not going to be fooled. He loves to tell stories, and he has to take part in enterprises in the service of someone else’s story, but he’s not going to derive a sense of who he is from any narrative. Early on a doctor asks him if he believes in the end of the world. Švejk responds, “I’d have to see that end first