Representative of Boll's literary oeuvre, The Clown incorporates many of the prominent thematic elements considered by Boll to be of fundamental significance in his work: the alienation of the individual by a dehumanizing, materialistic, and often emasculating society; the corruption of Christian ethic and spirituality; the loss of traditional familial and social unity; and the failure of mankind to accept the moral responsibilities of the age. In the novel, Hans Schnier, the son of a wealthy industrialist father and socially-dominated mother, emerges as the unique and endangered protagonist, artistic, temperamental, at times irrational, yet inherently kind and decent.
Refusing as a young man to conform to middle-class standards, Hans chose instead to become a clown, surely a personal statement directed toward his family as well as a means to express in his performances the absurdities.....
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