The Search for Meaning and the Illusion of Escaping: Martin Walser’s &lt;em&gt;Runaway Horse&lt;/em&gt; – a Novella about the Midlife Crisis

Sabina Osmanović

doi:10.3986/pkn.v43.i3.11

Abstract

This article is an analysis of Martin Walser’s novella Runaway Horse (1977) about the midlife crisis. It describes the search for meaning of a man in his mid-fifties, his imprisonment in futility and the illusion of a possible flight from this abyss. With this novella, Walser embarked on the broad field of philosophy, the ambiguity of postmodern existence and the questioning of traditional lifestyles. In addition, Walser is one of the first writers to artistically address the challenges and crises of age—especially in times of demographic change and the “aging of society,” a highly controversial topic. The question that runs through Walser’s novella is: how to live and how to love? Walser does not offer simple answers to all these questions, but he exacerbates the problems that we perceive only vaguely in our everyday life, at the highest level in literature and philosophy. That is why Walser’s characters appear so credible and why Runaway Horse represents a palpable example of the expressive power of literature.

Highlights

Many of the greatest minds in literary history have written their masterpieces driven by various reasons such as inner conflicts, the race against time and illness, existentialist crisis and so on
Martin Walser’s oeuvre did not emerge from such a dramatic state of creation, his writings are the result of what he called “a response to a lack” (Walser, “Sprache, sonst nichts”)—the attempt to come to terms with his inner problems and conflicts through the Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 43.3 (2020)
The novella Runaway Horse marks an important turning point in Walser’s writings, who till fought a hard battle with the literary critics

Summary

Sabina Osmanović

This article is an analysis of Martin Walser’s novella Runaway Horse (1977) about the midlife crisis. It turned out that the attacker was just as weak as the attacked person: that is why it just ended up being so good (Kaes 435).5 Whereas his previous book Jenseits der Liebe had turned out to be a low point—Walser got caught up in everyday conflicts and the perspective on the “big picture” of human life was barely visible—the opposite happened in the case of Runaway Horse, marking a turning point in Walser’s writing. With this narrative, the author had found the subject of midlife crisis that he portrayed so masterfully in the years that followed. This represented a completely new situation for the hitherto politicizing and polarizing Walser

Storylines in the turmoil of the midlife crisis

On the way to new shores of life

WORKS CITED