Page:On Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk.pdf/26

 point to by way of an alternative. So the absurdity which governs human society is a permanent feature of existence. Humour is a way of coping moment by moment, but it has nothing to offer as an alternative vision. Life remains as cruel and absurd after the joke or the story as it was before (a point which the movement back and forth between Švejk’s adventures and the grimmer tones of the narrator emphasizes for us).

Perhaps that is the reason why we don’t feel so disappointed that Hašek didn’t live to complete his novel. Given what we have, it’s difficult to imagine that it can lead to any definite conclusion beyond the tragic-comic sense that life simply goes on (and on) in the same way it has always done. Švejk has no home to return to, and he is not changing in any way that indicates he will at some point come to a fuller understanding of how things could and should be better and what he might do about the control the system exerts over him and others (such understanding simply does not exist, except as an illusion).

Parrott observes in his introduction that Švejk’s response to experience has a particular relevance to the Czech people’s sense of themselves, so much so that the term Švejkism has been widely applied to the national character (xv). For their history has made them (until very recently) the subjects of complex and oppressive bureaucratic systems of various political stripes (Austrian imperialism, Fascism, Communism), and their traditional response has generally been compliance rather than overt rebellion, a response generously larded with humour and passive resistance. How true this is may well be open to debate, but the fact that the term exists and that the book continues to be celebrated as the great Czech novel would seem to indicate that Hašek has indeed tapped into something close to the heart of his people.