The Death of an Ethos . . .
The Death of an Ethos . . .

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the experience under the communist regime as it is depicted in Herta Müller’s novel The Land of the Green Plums. It is more like a metaphysical experience rather than a political one – the novel is a metaphor not only for the abjection and the degradation of the human beings trapped in the totalitarian world, but also for the destruction of an old type of attitude towards life, an attitude which is defined by Virgil Nemoianu in some of his studies as the ethos of learning. Herta Müller’s characters seem to carry within themselves certain features of this ethos, but in a world which has no logic or causality, they become victims of their own attempts to evade the terrible reality. Nevertheless, in spite of the lack of substance of the characters and the apparently incidental ending of the novel, The Land of the Green Plums manages to describe what many other Central and Eastern European authors have ignored or have tried to forget – the fear, the ugliness and the absurdity of life in communism.

• Details
• Contents