The City Builder: Analysis of Major Characters
"The City Builder: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the complex lives and relationships of its central figures, primarily focusing on an aging city planner in a central Hungarian town. This narrator grapples with his past as a once-idealistic builder who sought to create a more equitable society but ultimately contributed to a system of social inequalities. Haunted by his physical and moral decay, he reflects on his life filled with regrets, particularly surrounding the death of his wife, who was characterized by her vibrant social presence and the emotional turmoil of their relationship.
The city builder's son, a radical intellectual and apprentice in city planning, challenges his father’s views and struggles with his own identity, ultimately facing tragic consequences during his imprisonment. The narrator’s father, a powerful and authoritarian figure, casts a long shadow over the family dynamic, influencing the narrator’s own conflicts with authority and legacy. Through these character explorations, the narrative presents a poignant commentary on the interplay between personal choices, familial ties, and societal structures, inviting readers to contemplate the impact of history on individual lives and the concept of progress in a changing world.
The City Builder: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: George Konrád
First published: A varosalapito, 1977 (English translation, 1977)
Genre: Novel
Locale: An unnamed provincial city in Hungary
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The 1970's
The narrator, an aged city planner and former professor in a central Hungarian town. He has been awarded many degrees and diplomas and honored for his role in the technical progress of his city in the early days of socialism. Keenly aware of his own physical and moral degeneration, he at times seems obsessed with death and guilt as he lives alone with his memories in an apartment stuffed with an accumulation of useless objects. In the city all around him, he sees reminders in concrete of the errors of his life, errors that can be erased only by dynamite. As a city planner, he mapped out for society a future that has become an almost unbearable present in a state ruled by power-hungry bureaucrats, chosen for their cynicism and idle chatter and protected by the organizational system. Born into a wealthy bourgeois family, he became a member of another privileged class, the intelligentsia, after private property was abolished. Although, as an idealistic builder of the city following the devastation of war, he attempted to abolish social stratification, in reality he created a modified system of inequalities to replace the former political structure. Once he repeated mindless slogans and believed the hierarchical military to be the most efficient of all organizations. He perfunctorily eulogizes his superior, a former Gestapo spy with thirty-two years in the movement who has committed suicide. Reflecting on the dead director, the city builder admits his own lust for power. Later, he inspects an earthquake-torn city, where, he believes, his own son lies buried in the rubble. Finally, he joins a noisy crowd in the town square on New Year's Eve. All greet one another in a friendly manner, and all expect to live until the year's end. the narrator has lingering doubts about the survival of either himself or his society.
The narrator's wife, an attractive, socially active woman who at the age of forty was killed when her car crashed into a tree. the city builder is haunted by memories of her life and death. He sees her lying on a pathologist's marble slab after the fatal accident. He relives her cremation. He recalls divorce proceedings in which both he and she stated that they could not live without each other. He remembers her indefatigable sensuality, her fragrance, her shrieks, and her endless activity. She often arrived home late in the evening, laden with intriguing parcels and exuding fascinating stories. She could be vindictive and stealthy. Nevertheless, the city builder is plagued with guilt for his infidelity while she was alive.
The narrator's son, an apprentice city builder, student of philosophy, and radical intellectual who often violently disagreed with his father's political position. the city builder recalls that from the day his son entered his life, he was a touchy tyrant who usurped the attention of the city builder's wife and, indeed, the whole household. An amateur man of the theater, the son was arrested at the age of twenty-two for insulting a state inspector who suspected him of subversion. While serving six months in prison, he fought the guards who abused him, and he sustained permanent injuries to the face and eyes. He was gifted in argumentation but emotionally unstable, alternating between states of frenzy and stupor. His father ultimately believes him to be an earthquake casualty but is unable to find his body.
The narrator's father, a private builder and architect and an alderman who enjoyed wealth and power as the head of the third generation to occupy the fashionable family estate. His greatest professional accomplishment was the designing of the city's neo-Romanesque power plant, a kind of castle for machines rather than people. An authoritarian father given to violence, he paid lip service to religion but reveled in slander and sexual debauchery. His sudden death profoundly affects the city builder, who longs to know what lies on the other side of life.