“Yes, the Grand March was coming to an end, but was that any reason for Franz to betray it? Wasn't his own life coming to an end as well? Who was he to jeer at the exhibitionism of the people accompanying the courageous doctors to the border? What could they all do but put on a show? Had they any choice? Franz was right. I can't help thinking about the editor in Prague who organized the petition for the amnesty of political prisoners. He knew perfectly well that his petition would not help the prisoners. His true goal was not to free the prisoners; it was to show that people without fear still exist. That, too, was playacting. But he had no other possibility. His choice was not between playacting and action. His choice was between playacting and no action at all. There are situations in which people are condemned to playact. Their struggle with mute power (the mute power across the river, a police transmogrified into mute microphones in the wall) is the struggle of a theater company that has attacked an army.”
Quote by Milan Kundera
Work
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
“If you only knew, all of you, how the camp remains in all our minds, and will until we die.”
Source: But You Did Not Come Back
Source: Birth of Our Power
Source: At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities
Source: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
Source: Alone With You in the Ether
Source: Alone With You in the Ether
