The Resilient Czech Spirit, on Display in Bohumil Hrabal's "Closely Observed Trains" and "I Served the King of England"

 The first part of his character seems void of emotion. For example when he cannot find his wife after the air raid;

"It wasn't until the third day that I came across her shoes. Slowly-I freed my Lise from the pile of rubble and dust,and when I uncovered half her body I saw that she was curled into a ball to protect the little suitcase…First I carefully hid it, then I dug out the rest of her, all but her head.  The blast had taken her head off, and we spent two days looking for it. I took the little suitcase and without saying goodbye to anyone walked away…because though I had dug up the whole courtyard, I never found the head.”( Hrabal 172-173).

Ditie shows no emotion over the loss of his wife, that she died trying to protect that little suitcase with all of those valuable stamps. He nonchalantly says that he never found her head, and he walks away from his son without a second thought. It is almost as if he has permanently associated Lise with the Germans and he just wants to walk away from it all, refusing to mourn but at the same time refusing to rejoice.

The only time in the first part of Ditie’s character development where he shows any emotion is when he is being examined by the doctor to see if he is worthy of impregnating an Aryan vagina;  "And I knew from reading the papers that on the very same day that I was standing here with my penis in my hand to prove myself worthy  to marry a German, Germans were executing Czechs, and so I couldn't get an erection and offer the doctor a few drops of my sperm."(Hrabal 140). This is a glimmer of the kind of individual he becomes; self reflective, considering the outside world and his part in it.

The second part of Ditie’s character development is very interesting. He is all alone, with only his animals for company, when he starts to remember his past. As he would work all day he began to reflect and “to ask myself about myself”(Hrabal 237). He comes to realize that life is more than just enjoying one’s self, “ that the basic thing in life is questioning death… and that death… is a conversation that takes place between infinity and eternity, and how we deal with our own death is the beginning of what is beautiful.”(Hrabal 228). Finally Ditie has evolved into something more substantial, something with a purpose larger than pleasure. He has evolved into an individual, an individual like Skřivánek, an individual representing the Czech nation.

Miloš is very much like Ditie, his character develops in two stages. The first stage Miloš is mainly concerned about losing his innocence. He is so discouraged by not being able to perform successful intercourse with his girlfriend that he slits his wrists. The second stage arrives at the very end of the book where we see Miloš evolve into a hero.

Hrabal uses a lot of detailed gross scenes in Closely Observed Trains. After being released from the S.S. train, Miloš comes upon some dead horses, which he sits upon and fingers the mane while reminiscing about his erectile dysfunction. While on the dead horses he thinks about his time in the hospital and how the girl next to him got her feet smashed on a train, but all she cared about was that her new shoes got smashed. Just like the war is raging inside his country and yet all Miloš can think about is still losing his virginity, which seems rather insignificant in the big picture.

Like Ditie, there is really only one time in the first character development phase that Miloš actually shows some emotion. He describes a trainload of cattle from the front that are all half dead saying, "nor those vans full of young kids, when the butchers carried them with their little feet tied with rope so tightly that they were numbed and dead, I couldn't bear it, I couldn't bear it. Nor when they moved little pigs… in open two-decker wagon in the frosts, little pigs with their heads pressed together, afraid to move..Oh, this was something I never could stand!” ( Hrabal 47).

This is touching, but also ironic, because these scenes could also be used to describe the transports of the Jews. So while Miloš is screaming about cows and pigs, there are actual people who are currently going through the same exact thing but they do not even get mentioned. The extent to which Miloš describes the cows are deeply moving: “ And all those cattle were down with strangles, several of them were lying there dead; from one cow’s rump hung a dead and rotting calf… everywhere nothing but terrible pairs of eyes silently reproaching, tortured eyes over which I wrung my hands. A whole trainload of the reproachful eyes of cattle. ‘ Those Germans are swine’ I cried.”(Hrabal 47).  The description of these poor cattle is heart wrenching and it seems so contradictory that such a description of livestock could conjure such emotion, but human beings in similar circumstances did not warrant mention.

Perhaps the most gruesome scene of all is also the scene that has the most to do with Miloš evolving into the hero. As he is getting ready to throw the bomb into the German supply train, the image of his grandfather comes up. Miloš is wondering why he is so calm when Hubička, the one who is always strong and courageous is so nervous, and then he realizes it is the spirit of his grandfather that gives him this strength. His grandfather stood alone with his outstretched hands trying to stop the German army with his hypnotic powers. The tanks do stop for a second, but then charge forward. Miloš’s grandfather never moves and his head gets smashed into the tanks tracks. The tank had to be sent to Prague in order to get the tracks working again, because of grandfather’s smashed head. It is here that Miloš feels his grandfather’s spirit, the spirit of a hero, who is not afraid to die for something, and he is proud to get to be apart of the operation to throw the bomb into the train. Even after he gets shot and is lying there in the dark, dying he repeats the words of the chief of the mail train about the German, “ You should have sat at home on your arse...”( Hrabal 91).Even though he dies, his spirit will live on with the Czech people, with all the allies charging down upon the Germans and finally bring them to their knees.

In conclusion, both Closely Observed Trains and I Served the King of England  show the trials and concerns of an individual living in the Czech Republic through some of the most tumultuous times in Czech history. It shows the significance of everyday life, and yet it shows its obscurity as well. The reader sees the protagonists mature into something greater than them, becoming a part of the Czech Spirit. The Czech Spirit which will fight back, and cannot be crushed.

Hrabal, Bohumil, I Served the King of England, Vintage, London England, 2006.

Lingea, English-Czech, Czech-English, Lingea, Czech Republic.