The Joke

After meeting Lucie, Ludvik walks through his now desolate hometown. He passes by the factories along the muddy Morava River and is beset by inescapable memories. He remembers the “first major disaster” that led to his downfall many years earlier (31), when Ludvik knew a credulous woman named Marketa.

The novel uses flashbacks to tell this history. In the aftermath of the communist revolution, Ludvik and other students meet regularly for group sessions about political theory and self-criticism. The other students often accuse Ludvik of individualism due to his wry, inscrutable smile. When he meets Marketa, he tries to seduce her by adopting a mask of detached irony. Marketa is a girl of “trusting simplicity” who often misunderstands jokes (34), even though she is intelligent. She attends a two-week summer training course, and in her letters to Ludvik, she writes about the rewarding nature of the course. Ludvik, who is annoyed by her absence, responds with a joke. On a postcard, he writes, “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!” (34).

Marketa does not respond to Ludvik’s following letters, and, other than a brief and awkward meeting in Prague, she disappears from his life.