Language and Meaning

Language is both the subject and the substance of the novel. The man’s monologue, spoken to the Hungarian barman in a Berlin bar, continually returns to the problem of whether words can still mean anything in a world that he views as morally and spiritually exhausted.

At the start, the man claims that language is “wholly corrupt” (19), thought and expression are futile, and everything follows its natural course regardless of what one says or does. This nihilistic stance seems to deny the possibility of communication altogether. The novel itself, which is composed of his own words, gradually exposes the impossibility of maintaining that stance. The story unfolds as an argument that language, though flawed and limited, still creates meaning through relation, emotion, and narrative form.

The man’s despair stems from a conviction that words have become detached from truth. As a failed...