The Rule of oppression in Herta Muller’s The Fox Was Ever The Hunter

 

Herta Muller’s The Fox Was Ever The Hunter is highly lyrical novel.  It depicts the Romania in the last days of the dictator Ceausescu’s rule. The Securitate is hovering like a shadow over the lives of the people. We find characters Clara, Adina , Paul and Pavel  who is her lover. One of the people is a mole unknown to others. The novelist describes the ambience of oppression. Adina , a school teacher observes warts on the children’s fingers and is  concerned that the touching of objects can cause migration of warts  on to her skin .

 The wart clusters on the children are full of all the grabbing, all the pushing and kicking, squeezing and shoving , and full of all the bullying and bruising. They contain eager crushes and cruel snubs, the cunning calculations of mothers and fathers, relatives and neighbours and strangers. And if eyes well up or a tooth breaks or an ear bleeds there is simply a shrug of the shoulders.(16)

While Adina is waiting in a café for Clara and Paul .The novelist describes the silence of terror.

Here are the quiet streets of the directors and inspectors , the mayors and secret police and army officers. The quiet streets of power, where even the wind is afraid when it starts to blow. And when it does blow it is afraid to eddy. Nd when it blusters it would rather  break  its own ribs than a branch. (21)

The atmosphere in the houses of master is terrific . How do servants behave?

When they walk on the lawn , they draw their insides into heir throats for fear of squashing the grass. Hen they cut the grass, a mirror appears in the whites of their eyes , where sickles and rakes gleam like scissors and combs. The servants don’t trust their own skins, because whenever they reach for something, their hands cast a shadow.  (22)

Adina comes to a café to look at the river and see the  trees . h the novelist describes the fear in the air.

 “The breath of fear looms in the park, it slows the mind and makes people see their lives in everything others say and do. No one ever knows if a given thought will become a spoken sentence or  a not in the throat. “ (35)

The fisherman gazing into the sea  the gullet in the middle of the current which holds the clothes of the drowned. The shivering  fisher man with the white cap of hair when asked the reason says  , when I lay my face in the grass, I see my own brain , naked in the river. ‘ (29)

When a tinsmith dies by suicide, his articles are robbed. Adina suspects  the seamstress,  barber, doctor one after another.

Clara works in a wire factory and Paul is her lover.  The director of the factory is lewd fellow. He comments, gets kicked by the husband of a cleaning lady  he is having an affair with, slides his hand into Adina’s blouse and moves down her back , she feels disgust but  asks him not to report as her back is without warts . The director says that he is different.

Outside the factory, the gateman exercises his privilege of searching the workers to avoid any pilferage. He creates fear in the minds and bodies of the workers.

As he searches ,the gateman hears their empty swallowing. Throats turn dry as a vise, fear rummages through stomachs, and passes out of their bowels as foul air that lingers at knee height. The gate keeper can smell the fear. And if he spend longer searching  a particular

bag ,   many are so afraid they pass not one , but two quite farts. (71)

The cat in the factory is a witness to all. it retains the image of the supervisor Grigore, the sexploitation of woman workers by him .  begets a brood of  children .Adina’s  lover Ilie writes her letters yearning. Pavel who claims himself as a lawyer has pleasure  with Clara in a cornfield and she asks him about his association with black car  symbolising Securitate and about her daughter. He gives an evasive reply.  He interrogates one Abi who is accused of contradictions and says Paul has confessed. The novelist writes, ”It’s a contradiction , thinks Abi, that outside on the wet street , the window is nothing but a window. That everyday and every night the world is divided into those who interrogate and torture and those who keep silent” (123- 124)

Pavel, the intelligence man accosts and enters into a relation with Clara. He lies that he has been a lawyer and promises to marry her after getting divorce.   He also enters the room of Clara and Adina surreptitiously .  Later Clara even gives him key . Adina is surprised to find that her doll of fox suffers cuts. She turns suspicious. When she journeys on a train  to  visit  Ilie, she faces banter from some soldiers. Back home, she and Paul get closer. She finds something disturbing in her room.

 “She climbs into bed. Her toes are cold, her night gown, the bed is cold. Her eyes ae cold. She hears her heart beating on the pillow. She see the table , the money , the flashlight , the chair, they are spinning, they are spinning inside her eyes.” (165)

Ilie thinks of escaping from his company for the country other side. Adina asks Clara about her abortion and  why she has not told her about Pavel. Clara says that it is because he is married.

Inside a café  Abi tells Adina and Paul about attempt by Pavel to turn him into a collaborator. The stifling , insecure, fearsome  feeling is described by the novelist through the image of winter.

 It is winter in the city , a winter grown  old and slow, a winter that pricks people with its cold. A winter in which mouths freeze and hands absently drop what they pickup, because fingertips thicken into leather.     A city winter in which the water refuse to turn into ice, in which old people wear their past lives like coats. A winter in which young people hate one another like poison whenever  they detect the slightest hint of happiness. And who nonetheless keep their eyes peeled while they go on searching foe their lives. A winter walking along the river where laughter freezes in stead  of water. Where stuttering passes for speech and half-uttered words for loud shouts. Where  every question dies away in the throat while silent tongues  keep bleating against clenched teeth.(181)

When Adina finds the suspicious man belonging to Securitate , she chides  Clara and leaves the house.                         

The dictator’s  arbitrary rule vanishes operas , orchestras . His eye is everywhere. When  Adina is warned by Clara about her impending arrest, she and Paul leave the city for a village. Abi refuses to along with them. Adina and Paul go to Liviu’s house in village and  take shelter there. The villagers there are used to listen gun shots despite barking of the dogs and gaggle of the  geese. After a few days of living in fear and insecurity, they come to know about the dictator’s end. Adina and Paul come back to Adina’s  apartment in the city. Adina says in reference to the dead dictator and his wife,” Where other people have a heart , those two have a cemetery , and between their temples there’s nothing but dead people, small and bloody like frozen raspberries.” (230)The power equations in the school and factory change. Adina curtly dismisses  Clara saying that she doesn’t know her for whom Pavel, the member of Securitate and now a fugitive  is waiting in Vienna on the passport of Abi dead.     Ilie realizes his ardent desire to reach  the other side of the border  The sky is still not clear as clouds of insecurity are still hovering over it.