Page:On Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk.pdf/3

 by the narrator’s editorial opinion can affect our response for the worse because we may well sense we are being pushed in directions we do not want to go or where the fiction is not taking us. The episodic nature of the picaresque, however, permits such encounters with the narrator with a minimum of dislocation (although there’s always the risk that, if the narrator becomes a major presence throughout the novel, we may end up finding the narrator more engaging and interesting than the fictional characters, not an uncommon response among readers of Henry Fielding’s novels, for example).

THE NARRATOR IN THE GOOD SOLDIER ŠVEJK

Hašek repeatedly confronts us with the didactic voice of the narrator, sometimes in casual asides and sometimes at considerable length (note, for example, the opening of Chapter 11 in Part 1, a two-page rant against religion: “Preparations for the slaughter of mankind have always been made in the name of God or some supposed higher being which men have devised and created in their own imagination” And so on). We learn that the narrator was himself a soldier in the 91st regiment when he interrupts the story of Švejk to deliver a small lecture on batmen in the army (162–165). And other details given directly to the reader reinforce the impression that whoever is telling us the story knows what is talking about, because he has been there. Hence, his frequently aggressive opinions arise out of his experience.

These intrusions contribute little directly to the story, since they tend merely to underscore emphatically something that is already evident enough in the satire (given what happens in the story, we certainly don’t need to be reminded here of the hypocrisy of the Church or the incompetence and corruption of its priests or the stupidities of military justice, for example). What’s remarkable about these intrusions, however, is the narrator’s tone, which typically contrasts sharply with the typically more genial ironic satire in the fiction:

They were now going back to the front to get new wounds, mutilations and pains and to earn the reward of a simple wooden cross over their graves. Years after on the mournful plains of East