Farewell party: how terrible and hopeless our dreams are!

The Farewell Party is a novel written by Milan Kundera, a famous Czech writer, in 1970. This novel was not published in Czech, but after Kundera immigrated to France.

The love story of trumpeter, American businessman, nursing home nurse and revolutionary who is about to emigrate in the novel reflects the plight of people in small countries who are at a loss in the narrow gap of big country game. This novel won the best foreign literature prize in Italy and is an important masterpiece of Milan Kundera.

Who are the characters involved in the novel?

The story of this book takes place in a closed hot spring town, and Kundera mainly writes two pairs of characters. The first couple are the famous trumpeter and band star Clima, and the town nurse Ruzena. The second pair of characters are revolutionary yakubu and adopted daughter Olga.

After Ruzena, a small town nurse, got pregnant. She told Clima the news on the phone. The next day, Clima went to a nursing home and found a nursing home doctor, Scretto, and asked him to help Ruzena have an abortion. Dr. Skretto agreed to help in principle, but in exchange, he asked Klima to hold a concert with him. Clima agreed.

After careful consideration, Clima made an appointment with Ruzena. Klima said she was going to marry Ruzena. They will spend their honeymoon in Italy, but the fetus in her belly will only bring trouble to the newlyweds. After a long period of persuasion by Clima, Ruzena agreed to abortion.

On the third day, a new role-psychologist and revolutionary yakubu appeared, and the story between yakubu and his adopted daughter Olga gradually unfolded. Yakubu's comrades were killed in the revolution, and yakubu took Orr as his adopted daughter. This time he came to town to see her and say goodbye to her. At the same time, I also bid farewell to Dr. Scretto.

It turns out that during the revolution, yakubu asked the doctor for a piece of blue poison, ready to commit suicide at any time, in case of emergency, to avoid torture. Now, yakubu has returned the blue poison. Yakubu met his adopted daughter Olga as he wished, but the relationship between them was a little subtle. Olga fell in love with yakubu, while yakubu was embarrassed about her adopted daughter's feelings.

On the fourth day, the story reached its climax. The main characters gathered at the concert held by Dr. Clima and Dr. Scretto. But the real highlight was the love night in several rooms that night.

First of all, Mrs. Clima made a special trip to the nursing home. She doesn't believe in Clima's performance in this hot spring town at all. He must have cheated again. As a result, my wife came to town and was shocked to see Clima's performance poster.

But Mrs. Clima, who is full of jealousy, will not let her husband go. All the teasing behaviors of the beautiful Mrs. Clima that night made Clima depressed to exhaustion.

Yakubu found a medicine tube containing blue pills in a coffee shop. This medicine tube was left by Ruzena.

See RuZena blue sedative, yakubu remembered her blue poison, take it out and put it in RuZena's medicine tube for observation. Ruzena then returned to the coffee shop and took the medicine tube from yakubu. Yakubu was about to go after him, but Olga came in and caught yakubu.

Yakubu has been thinking about the poison in Ruzena's handbag, so she can only take part in accidental amusement with Olga in fear and trembling.

Mrs. Clima made a documentary with a team that came to town from the capital. Ruzena happened to pass by and was dragged into the party. Ruzena was assaulted by a photography assistant. At this time, American millionaire Bart River appeared. He grabbed Ruzena's wrist to calm her down and drew attention to the fact that the shy and simple girl Ruzena is the sun in the town.

Bart river left with RuZena. So at this concert, the two spent an unsettled night of love.

Finally, Ruzena went to the hospital to have an abortion as promised by Clima, but unfortunately she was followed by her ex-boyfriend Frante. Ruzena is very upset between her two boyfriends. When she was upset, she took out a sedative and ate it. Ruzena took the wrong medicine and yakubu's blue poison, so she died. The negligent murderer yakubu left the Czech Republic on a desolate and beautiful morning.

What does the "farewell" in the novel mainly mean?

Farewell is the theme of this novel. Kundera described the farewell of Clima and Ruzena, yakubu and Olga, and Clima. Finally, Ruzena died, and yakubu bid farewell to the motherland.

In a sense, the immigrant revolutionary yakubu is the core of the theme of "Farewell" in the novel. When life becomes unbearable, people can only leave their country. In this case, fertility has become a dilemma, because people can't decide the fate of the next generation. This leads to the discussion of violence.

The pregnant Ruzena is undoubtedly the concentrated expression of the fertility theme, while the revolutionary yakubu is full of strong anti-fertility thoughts, which is completely opposite to Ruzena. From the first meeting, yakubu and Ruzena hated each other. The two characters depicted in the novel are symmetrical and opposite in form.

For yakubu, there are too many violent memories in his long revolutionary career, which makes him disgusted with fertility and sex, even the beauty of women.

The situation in yakubu is that the two themes, violence and fertility, cannot be solved, and they constantly collide head-on. Yakubu's conversations with Dr. Scretto and bartlett, a wealthy businessman, also focused on violence and fertility: they asked whether it was appropriate to be a father in an unfortunate and hopeless country.

Yakubu's speech focused on human misfortune, ingratitude and farewell, and he listed five reasons against having children in this country.

Yakubu's opposition to procreation naturally has good reasons. And what about those who support fertility? The attitudes of the doctor Scretto and the rich Bart River are in sharp contrast with those of yakubu.

What is unique about the writing style of this novel?

This satirical novel adopts the tradition of ancient European comedies and is full of farce and carnival colors.

For example. For example, at the beginning of the novel, after the guitarist suggested driving and killing a pregnant nurse, no one, including the author, questioned the guitarist's evil thoughts, and no one judged his behavior of inducing others to commit crimes.

For another example, doctor Scretto made infertile women pregnant with their children by injecting semen, and the author Kundera also asked the doctor to do so, not only without severely reprimanding the cheated women, but also without expressing the slightest sympathy. Instead, he took a casual and heartless joke attitude towards the descendants of doctors with big noses who appeared in the town. Why? Because if we interpret it from the perspective of European comedy, the untrue details, carnival and absurd plot in the play not only make people laugh, but also lead to serious themes, which are opposite to them.

The novel cleverly hides some plots. Here are two examples: one is the loser of carnival, and the other is the symbolic meaning of Ruzena.

In the carnival, people temporarily take off the mask of daily seriousness and complete a complete release beyond the system and reality. But in Kundera's novels full of carnival atmosphere, what is hidden is the intention of anti-carnival. Most of the characters in the story failed to satisfy their desires and achieve their goals.

What is the purpose of Clima? Get rid of RuZena, of course. He seems to have succeeded because Ruzena is dead. But Ruzena's death has nothing to do with all the efforts of Clima, so we can say that Clima's efforts failed.

Similarly, yakubu's relationship with his adopted daughter also failed. Yakubu tried to save RuZena's life, and the result was also a failure. Where's Bart River? Although he gave Ruzena a new life in a short time, an accident happened and his efforts went up in smoke in an instant.

Secondly, we need to re-examine and explain Ruzena. Like yakubu, Kundera finally left his motherland. In the farewell book, why did he use such an important pen and ink to write Ruzena, a girl in our town? In the story of an intellectual bidding farewell to the motherland, why is pregnant Ruzena an important role?

At first, Ruzena didn't want to give up her admiration for her boyfriend Frant in the town, but also dreamed of her love with the capital celebrity Clema, hoping to leave the town and integrate into the metropolis. Reality and ideal vacillate, as if two men are the two poles of her existence and her only world.

We will think that this is a vulgar and superficial woman. But after a decisive night with bartlett, Ruzena understood that this universe also contains other worlds, and life can be without Clima or Frante.

She found it unnecessary to worry. A smart and mature man can lead her into a field where time is kind and youth will not fade away so quickly. Even if this man doesn't exist, she knows she is valuable. The world is very big, and there is a shortage of beautiful women everywhere.

In this sense, we can try to think about the fate of Czechoslovakia with the bound Ruzena. 1968 65438+ 10, the Prague spring movement that shocked the world broke out in the Czech Republic. Kundera is an important member of the movement.

They planned many activities and thought of many ways to make the country better, but no one expected that on August 20, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact members invaded Czechoslovakia and the Prague Spring aborted. Kundera was punished and lost his job.

If this is compared with reality, Ruzena died unexpectedly in the novel. Is this the fate of Prague Spring in real history? This woman who died unexpectedly during pregnancy can also be Kundera's motherland, a period of history and past events, a dream and expectation, and a dream of revival in Czechoslovakia.

Like Ruzena's city dream, although they have invested a lot of expectation, time, energy and imagination, it is realistic and touching enough, and the details are vivid, which seems to be completely achievable. However, Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviet Union, and Ruzena ate yakubu's blue poison by mistake. Their dreams were shattered by some accidents caused by external reasons.

Does this novel correspond to The Unbearable Lightness of Life?

Like Kundera's other novel The Unbearable Lightness of Life, The Farewell Party also discusses the relationship between lightness and heaviness: for example, Ruzena wanted to bid farewell to the town through love, but finally she bid farewell to her life because of eating poison by mistake, and her death was so light that no one paid attention to it that even the murderer yakubu left easily; For example, the rich Bartholomew appeared as a savior, and Kundera deliberately hinted at Bartholomew's special identity many times. However, this heavy mission is in sharp contrast with Bartlett's frivolous attitude when he learned of Ruzena's death.

What Kundera may want to tell us more is that our life is always in a serious and humorous irony; This absurdity is also the perspective that Kundera's works always bring us to examine life.