The Joke

The Joke explores the relationship between the pre-revolutionary past and the post-revolutionary present in mid-20th-century Czechoslovakian society. The structure of the novel is split between these two eras, with the nonlinear narrative beginning in the present as Ludvik returns to the town where he was born and raised, a journey that sends him into a self-reflective reverie. The more Ludvik explores his memories, however, the more the narrative reveals these memories to be entirely subjective. Ludvik’s relationship with Lucie, for example, is one of the definitive moments in his life. Despite the profound impact Lucie has on him, however, he does not truly know her. As revealed from Kostka’s perspective, Ludvik does not understand the abuse that Lucie survived in the past nor the ways this abuse shaped her views of sex and love. Ludvik’s Lucie is an artificial creation, an artifact of the past that is personal to his interpretation of the future but that—as shown through narrative juxtaposition—is fundamentally incomplete. Ludvik’s relationship with his artificial past represents the unknowability of existence. The structure of the novel emphasizes these subjective contradictions and illustrates that no character can possibly have a complete or authentic understanding of the past.