The Garden Party (play)

The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost) (1963) is a play by Václav Havel.

The Plot

The protagonist is Hugo Pludek, who is a very average person from a middle-class Czech family during the 1960s. His parents are worried about his future and so they arrange him an appointment with influential Mr. Kalabais at the Garden Party of a Liquidation Agency. He meets him and a long process of absurd situation starts. All of the functionaries of the Liquidation Agency speak in a degenerated, nonsense language, that in its results does not mean anything at all. Hugo is intelligent and adaptive, therefore he changes his behaviour, becomes a careerist, acquires the ability to speak platitudinally, using phrases that don't mean anything and finally becomes the head of the Liquidation Agency. The result is the loss of his own identity. The book ends when Hugo comes home and has changed so much that his own parents don't recognise him.The book and Hugos's new behaviour forms a parallel to the behaviour of many of the Czech population during the Communist era, which was to conform to the rules of the majority.It can be also argued, that the protagonist of this book is a phrase itself, showing the absurdity of the reality.

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Bibliography:

"Přehled české literatury 20.století, Vladimír Prokop, Sokolov, 2001"