Roadside Picnic: Analysis of Major Characters
"Roadside Picnic" explores the complex dynamics of its major characters set against the backdrop of a mysterious alien visitation. The protagonist, Redrick (Red) Schuhart, is a daring stalker from the town of Harmont, known for his reckless pursuit of value in the dangerous Zone left behind by extraterrestrial beings. With a complex personality that blends toughness with a hidden humanity, Red seeks both material wealth and deeper meaning, even as he faces significant personal and moral challenges.
Supporting characters include Buzzard Burbridge, a greedy and sadistic stalker whose actions often betray his companions, yet whose love for his children reveals a more vulnerable side. Kirill Panov, a scientist craving discovery, contrasts with Dr. Valentine Pilman, a philosophical thinker who reflects on the absurdity of human existence in light of the alien encounter. Richard (Dick) Noonan represents bureaucratic complacency, while Guta Schuhart, Red's devoted wife, balances familial responsibilities amidst the chaos of their lives. Lastly, their mutant daughter, affectionately called "Monkey," embodies the tragic consequences of their world. Together, these characters illustrate the profound themes of survival, greed, and the search for meaning in a universe marked by indifference.
Roadside Picnic: Analysis of Major Characters
Authors: Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky
First published: Piknik na obochine, 1972 (English translation, 1977)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Harmont, a town in Canada
Plot: Science fiction
Time: The late 1990's and the early 2000's
Redrick (Red) Schuhart, the protagonist, a daring, competent, and roguish “stalker” from the Visitation town of Harmont. He is nicknamed “Red” because of his bright red hair. A laboratory assistant at the Harmont Institute for Extraterrestrial Cultures at the age of twenty-three, with time he deals more and more in illegal Visitation Zone contraband. By the age of twenty-eight, he has only his illegal career. He remains insatiable in his desire to face the hidden terrors of the Zone and to find value (both material and spiritual) among the alien remains, despite being imprisoned twice for illegal activities and despite many brushes with death. He frequents the Borscht, a stalker bar, where he finds oblivion in drink. He is contemptuous of priggish authority, talkative greenhorns, and stalkers who break the code. He is hot-tempered but can be calm and cool when necessary. He has quick reflexes, a basic instinct for survival, and a knowledge of the peculiarities of the Zone that comes only from experience, but he is always a physical wreck after his excursions there. A loner who talks tough and acts tough, he has a soft heart for friends and family; beneath his protective shell and surface hate is a deep-seated, though intermittent, humanism. After sacrificing his companion to his quest, he requests from the hard-earned magical Golden Ball “Happiness for everybody, free, and no one will go away unsatisfied.”
Buzzard Burbridge, an infamous, avaricious old stalker, a survivor known for his desertion of companions in trouble. Schuhart rightly calls him “a rat.” He is a wife-beater and a sadist. Buzzard loses his legs on one trip (they melt) and thereafter tries to bribe Schuhart (who brought him back alive) into going after a booby-trapped Golden Ball, reputedly an Aladdin's lamp that will grant any truly wanted wish. His only redeeming quality is his love for his two handsome children: an idealistic, innocent son and a beautiful but vicious daughter. His greed forces him to share the secret of the Golden Ball and send Schuhart on his final trip into the Zone.
Kirill Panov, a friend and employer of Schuhart, a Russian scientist with the United Nations team at Harmont. Worn out, gray, and silent at the beginning, he becomes radiant and grinning from his clandestine trip to the Zone with Schuhart, for he needs the excitement of discovery to give his life meaning and truly believes that the Zone will bring peace and harmony. His inexperience, however, results in his blind step back into a silvery web whose alien force leaves him dead shortly thereafter.
Dr. Valentine Pilman, a wry Canadian Nobel Prize winner, the senior physicist at the Zone. His tongue-in-cheek discussions of the “Visitation” mock the pretensions and vanities of his fellow mortals. Dr. Pilman is small, delicate, and neat, with a low, broad forehead and a bristly crewcut. He shares with a schoolboy credit for the Pilman Radiation theory of Deneb visitors; he describes the extraterrestrial visit as a “roadside picnic” and the curious, incomprehensible, oft-times destructive materials left behind as the waste discards. He speculates that humanity may be superfluous, that human definitions of reason are meaningless, and that the universe is basically an absurdist one on which humans try to impose unrealistic theories that fit their preconceptions and prejudices. Pilman's comments provide the philosophical base of the novel.
Richard (Dick) Noonan, a lazy, complacent bureaucrat, out to stalk the stalkers but blind to the daily dealings of even his longtime friend, Red Schuhart. Short, plump, and pink, at the age of fifty-one he dashes around town in his Peugeot, supposedly supervising electronic equipment supplies for the Harmont branch of the IEC. In actuality, he is an incompetent spy, making contacts and trying to stop the flow of Zone materials out of the area but duped by his informer and ignorant of the intricacies of the illegal trade. He adores Guta and Monkey (to whom he takes candy and toys) and threatens the neighbors who pester them. Dr. Pilman shares his theories with Noonan over drinks.
Guta Schuhart, Redrick's mistress and then devoted wife, beautiful, energetic, strong, and proud, with a long neck “like a young mare's.” Guta is committed to life and to family. She defends her mutant child against human cruelty and provides the solid family security her husband needs, but the strain takes its toll.
“Monkey” Schuhart, Redrick's mutant daughter. Her nickname results as much from her nonstop chattering as from the long, silky golden fur that covers her body, her hairy paws, and her huge, dark eyes with no whites at all. As an infant, she is warm and affectionate, but growth produces terrible and pathetic regression. She develops a sullen face, coarse brown fur, and limited responses.