Setting Free the Bears by John Irving

First published: 1969

Type of plot: Comic realism

Time of work: Spring and summer of 1967, with flashbacks to the years 1938-1955

Locale: Primarily Austria (especially Vienna) and Yugoslavia

Principal Characters:

• Hannes Graff, a failed university student
• Siegfried (Siggy) Javotnik, a university dropout, motorcycle salesman, and adventurer
• Hilke Marter, Siggy’s mother
• Gallen, a country girl and Hannes’s girlfriend
• Zahn Glanz, Hilke’s boyfriend before the war
• Grandfather Marter, Hilke’s father
• Ernst Watzek-Trummer, a chicken farmer and an Austrian patriot
• Vratno Javotnik, an apolitical Yugoslav survivor and Siggy’s father
• Gottlob Wut, a German soldier, head of a motorcycle unit in Yugoslavia

The Novel

Setting Free the Bears is divided into three parts. The first, titled “Siggy,” is narrated in the first person by Hannes Graff, one of the principals in the book. The second part contains Siggy’s notebook, with entries alternating between his “Zoo Watches,” in which he spies on the guards and animals at the Heitzinger Zoo outside Vienna preparatory to freeing the animals, and his “Pre-History,” in which is recounted the personal history of Siggy against a background of World War II, particularly during the Anschluss and with the partisans in the mountains of Yugoslavia. The third section, again narrated by Hannes Graff, relates the zoo break which Hannes stages with the help of his girlfriend, Gallen, in order to fulfill the fantasy of his now dead companion, Siggy.

The narrative begins when Graff, who has recently failed an important university examination, meets a strange young man whom he has been watching in the Rathaus Park. Together they purchase a seven-hundred-cubic-centimeter, vintage Royal Enfield motorcycle to take to Italy, where they plan to enjoy the spring. After a stop at the Heitzinger Zoo, where Siggy explains that he plans to free the animals, the two heroes ride into the Austrian countryside, declaring that they will live off the land. They pick up Gallen, a young country girl who is on her way to work for her aunt, who owns an inn. Hannes burns his legs on the exhaust pipes of the motorcycle, and the two young men lay over at the hotel owned by Gallen’s aunt. Siggy assaults the local milkman, whom he sees beating his draft horse, and is pursued by the police as he flees back to Vienna to prepare for the zoo escapade. A few days later, he returns to rescue Hannes from Gallen and her aunt but dies while trying to elude the local police when he slides under a truck loaded with beehives and is stung to death.

Hannes discovers Siggy’s diary, and the second section of the narrative is made up of entries from it. Alternating between Siggy’s notes on the guards at the zoo, especially O. Schrutt, and the tales of his ancestry, the notebook passages fill in the details of Siggy’s past and explore some of the horrors of World War II as it was experienced by Siggy’s mother, Hilke Marter, and her family and her boyfriend, as they witness the humiliation of the German Anschluss of Austria during the early spring of 1938. The family flees Vienna for the relative safety of Kaprun, near Kitzbuhel, in the Alps, in the taxi of Hilke’s boyfriend, Zahn Glanz, who has turned from his studies at the University of Vienna to demonstrate against the Nazi takeover of his homeland. Zahn disappears while smuggling an anti-Hitler newspaper editor out of the country and is never heard from again. The narrative, Pre-History II, switches to Siggy’s father, Vratno Javotnik, and his role, or nonrole, amid the brutal internecine fighting among the various partisan bands in the mountains of Yugoslavia during the war.

Vratno Javotnik is politically uncommitted and wants only to survive the hostilities, but he finds himself unavoidably allied with an Ustashi terrorist group, and he is assigned to kill a German officer, Gottlob Wut, the leader of a motorcycle unit. The reasons for killing Wut are extremely vague but have something to do with Wut having been suspected of tampering with the motorcycle of the Italian entry in the Grand Prix of 1930, thereby winning pots of money for himself and for those who knew of the sabotage. Javotnik likes Wut and prolongs his life, only to have Wut killed in the urinal of a nightclub by a rival political group. Vratno escapes from the nightmare of Yugoslavia on Wut’s 1933 Grand Prix racing motorcycle, arriving in Vienna in 1945, at the time of the Soviet liberation of the city, where he meets Hilke, and, after it is discovered that she is pregnant by him, the two marry. Siggy’s father dies at the hands of some former Yugoslav soldiers while celebrating the death of Stalin in 1953. Hilke abandons her family in 1956, shortly after they move back to Kaprun, and the section closes with the death of Hilke’s father, Grandfather Marter.

The concluding section of the novel details the zoo break and its tragic aftermath. Hannes talks Gallen into helping him carry out Siggy’s fantasy of freeing the animals, but the results are disastrous, with most of the beasts being captured immediately after their release. The novel concludes, however, on a hopeful and enigmatic note. Hannes retreats to the country to talk over the failure of the gesture of freeing the creatures with Ernst Watzek-Trummer, and there, alone in the woods, he sees the two “Rare Spectacled Bears” wandering together down a forest road and recognizes that his effort has not been totally wasted. His vision in the woods provides him with a sense of accomplishment and self-knowledge, suggesting that his journey has not been in vain and that the lessons of history will help him to understand his own mortality and what life has in store for him.

The Characters

Setting Free the Bears is peopled by an eccentric collection of historical and fictional characters. The background of history is manipulated and controlled by actual figures such as Kurt von Schuschnigg, Chancellor of Austria, who replaces the previous head of state when he is assassinated by Nazi sympathizers. While Hitler, Hermann Goring, and the Austrian Nazi Artur von Seyss-Inquart plan the Anschluss, Ernst Watzek-Trummer, a chicken farmer who lives on the outskirts of Vienna, dons a homemade suit of pie plates covered with feathers in order to protest the coming of the German troops by appearing as the Habsburg eagle in downtown Vienna. Gottlub Wut, leader of the scout outfit, Motorcycle Unit Balkan 4, helps Siggy’s father escape from the clutches of the Slivnica family: Dabrinka, the fair; Julka and Baba, the sulky and the squat; Bijelo, the eldest; Gavro and Lutvo, the idiot twins; and Todor, the leader. The names and characters are as loony as the events which make up the adventures which beset Siggy’s father as he wanders his way north out of Yugoslavia toward his meeting with Siggy’s mother in Vienna.

In the midst of this collection of hapless and often crazy people, the novel focuses on Hannes Graff, a conventional but historyless university dropout who is fascinated and finally seduced by the antics of Siegfried (Siggy) Javotnik, who supplies through his journal the central portion of the narrative and who plans the zoo break which Hannes eventually carries out after Siggy’s death. It is Siggy who is preoccupied by history, both his own and the history that has formed the world into which he was born. His journal entries become the most engaging portion of the book and present the reader with the characters that are most memorable both for their eccentricities and their thoughts. In comparison to the Pre-History sections, the protagonists Siggy and Hannes seem to be pale, one-dimensional figures. In fact, it could be easily demonstrated that the most engaging character of the book is Vratno Javotnik, whose adventures during the war provide an instructive point of comparison with the adventures of his son and Hannes.

The rest of the novel is rounded out by the Marter family, Grandfather and Grandmother, Hilke, and Ernst, who joins them as an adjunct member of their household when they leave Vienna during the Nazi takeover. All the characters become living, or, more often, dead witnesses to the irrationality and whims of history as one by one they disappear or meet unexpected, often violent, deaths at the hands of those who haunt them from the past. They carry forward their own delusions about themselves, about their personal myths, and about history, which keeps surprising them with its randomness and cruelty.

Critical Context

Setting Free the Bears was well received for a first novel, garnering complimentary reviews in such publications as The New York Times Book Review and Saturday Review. The flaws in the novel detected by those early reviews, however, have not really diminished with the passing of time. The novel is still criticized for being a little short on characterization, especially that of the two main protagonists, Siggy and Hannes, and the critics still complain about the division of the novel into three uneven parts. What has happened as John Irving’s reputation has grown with his subsequent novels is that the themes and figures of his first book now can be seen in the context of his subsequent fiction, which clarifies some of the material thought confusing on first reading. Seen from this perspective, it is apparent that even with the book’s faults, it is the work of a major talent. The distinctive narrative voice and the humor and inventiveness which have characterized Irving’s later novels are all present, if in embryonic form, in this first work. The world of Hannes Graff contains the beginnings of the world of T. S. Garp, whose adventures have brought his creator sufficient recognition to be considered a literary force in postwar American fiction.

Bibliography

Campbell, Josie. John Irving: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Offers a brief biography of Irving’s life, as well as an overview of his fiction. Devotes an entire chapter to Setting Free the Bears, which includes discussion of plot and character development, thematic issues, and a new critical approach to the novel.

Irving, John. Interview by Suzanne Herel. Mother Jones 22 (May-June, 1997): 64-66. Irving discusses his views on religion, censorship, literature, abortion, and wrestling. His thoughts on these topics illuminate the tone and philosophy of his writings.

Reilly, Edward C. Understanding John Irving. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. Chapter 8 gives a thorough analysis of Irving’s characterization and symbolism and a brief summary of critical reviews.

Rickard, John. “Wrestling with the Text.” Meanjin 56 (1997). Rickard presents an incisive analysis of Irving’s autobiography, The Imaginary Girlfriend. Although Rickard does not address any of Irving’s novels in depth, his review of Irving’s memoir provides valuable insight into Irving’s creative process.