Word: kohout
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Pavel Kohout's The Hangwoman details the effortlessness of killing in modern society. By setting his satiric novel in a school for executioners, Kohout presents a brutal and vivid image which he masks in the lightness of his writing. The school, the seven students, and the two directors become metaphors for the interactions of society, humanity, and bureaucracy...
...Kohout adopts a harsh, cynical style, over-whelming us with facts about medieval torture and penological fictions. In the first pages of the novel, Wolf's description of the role of the executioner, as the last judge rather than as a murderer, intrigues with its exuberance and simplicity, and tempts with its logic...
...KOHOUT ATTACKS THE coexistence of bureaucracy with the "just following orders" mentality in modern society. Most novelists would make a treatise out of the novel, but Kohout's gallows humor sharpens the images and situations in our minds...
...When Kohout describes Wolf and Simsa's pasts, the commonness, the very ordinary aspects of these people, is striking. They weren't born with a natural talent for killing; they didn't commit sadistic acts on their siblings. They are now executioners because they were good at following orders, at working within and for the system. They could just as well be gardeners...