Lucie Sebetka: The Phenomenon of Abandonment in Milan Kundera’s The Joke

Abstract

Milan Kundera describes Lucie Sebetka, the tacit heroine in The Joke, as “a mysterious, elusive” character who “stands, so to speak, behind glass; she cannot be touched” (The Art of the Novel, p. 86). The Joke is about, among other things, the depersonalization of individual existence, the impossibility of self-definition in the post-1948 Communist Czechoslovakia. Through Lucie and the other characters in the novel, Kundera explores the phenomenon of abandonment, the peripheral position of the individual in the course of history, the cataclysmic sociopolitical changes and unyielding revolutionary requisites. Particularly in the case of Lucie, the author seems to test, rather than to prove, whether it is at all possible for any person to remain “elusive” and untouchable. As Kostka and Ludvik relate in the novel, Lucie seems outside history, unaware of the revolution or Christianity, and she expresses herself mostly through non-verbal, pastoral icons, an “instinctive precursor of language.” However, her constant displacement around the country, the two rape incidents and other mistreatments suggest that Lucie’s peripheral position does not warrant a comforting retreat from the socio-political euphoria. Rather, it becomes the realm where the revolutionary history seems to encroach in a most vicious manner on individual existence in order to proclaim its imminence.