The Garden Party (play)
Encyclopedia
The Garden Party (1963) is a play by Václav Havel
.
Hugo does not find Kalabis but instead a sequence of absurd encounters starts. All of the functionaries of the Liquidation Office speak in a degenerated, ideological, content-free language, as is expected from their role in the bureaucratic system.
Hugo is intelligent and adaptive, therefore is able to adjust his behaviour. He learns to speak platitudinally, using clichés that do not mean anything real and finally becomes the head of the newly created Central Inauguration and Liquidation Committee. As the result, he completely loses his identity. The play ends when Hugo comes home changed so much that his own parents don't recognise him.
The play and Hugo's new behaviour can be a parallel to the behaviour of many of the Czech population during the Communist era, who chose to conform to the rules of the regime for material gain.
It can be also argued that the protagonist of this play, in pursuit of his career, has become a cliché himself.
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
.
Plot
The protagonist is Hugo Pludek, who is an average person from a middle-class Czech family. His parents are worried about his future so they arrange an appointment for him with the influential Mr. Kalabis at the garden party of the Liquidation Office.Hugo does not find Kalabis but instead a sequence of absurd encounters starts. All of the functionaries of the Liquidation Office speak in a degenerated, ideological, content-free language, as is expected from their role in the bureaucratic system.
Hugo is intelligent and adaptive, therefore is able to adjust his behaviour. He learns to speak platitudinally, using clichés that do not mean anything real and finally becomes the head of the newly created Central Inauguration and Liquidation Committee. As the result, he completely loses his identity. The play ends when Hugo comes home changed so much that his own parents don't recognise him.
The play and Hugo's new behaviour can be a parallel to the behaviour of many of the Czech population during the Communist era, who chose to conform to the rules of the regime for material gain.
It can be also argued that the protagonist of this play, in pursuit of his career, has become a cliché himself.