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Martin Kukučín – Not Awake

There are many famous writers in my country who write similar stories like Miguel de Cervantes but I decided to describe only one of them which is comparable with Cervantes’s Don Quijote and it is Not Awake written by Martin Kukučín.

Both main characters of the stories live in their own visionary world filled with ideals and fancies. Don Quijote thinks the evil is defeatable, moreover, he wants to defend credit of his girlfriend. Ondráš reasoned out something but it was caused by one girl who didn’t know what is she doing. Both Ondráš and Don Quijote didn’t understand the real lifestyle and therefore they were usually the ones who were flouted. Finally Ondráš dies with good feeling because he saves the gees. At the end of Don Quijote he drops his dreams.

With the main character Ondráš Machuľa author M. Kukučín shows, with deep comprehension, kind of person growing up in the cheapest part of a village called Lenov. In this tale there is shown a real picture of a Slovak village where he comes from.

Ondráš is a mentally backward rural goose-shepherd who fell in love with a normal girl, Suzie. She is from the same village and had never wanted to marry him. That’s the reason why this story ends tragically.

To describe Ondráš’s face you need only few words: huge head with sharp hair like some animal, small forehead, nearly invisible starry eyes, wide mouth and so on. I think it’s enough to be able to imagine himself. He is a typical ugly young man. People are looking at him with deep sympathy and behave to him like to a little child. He is the only one who thinks that he is as good-looking man as all the other ones in the village, moreover he hopes he is something more.

Both his parents were respected but after he was born his father began to spend all of his free time in a local pub from where he always came home drunk. Therefore his wife with Ondráš moved to her elder sister. After about two years his father died because of alcohol.

Once, when Ondráš was grazing his favourite gees, Suzie came there to bring him lunch. They were having a conversation about her problems between her and her fiancé. She looked like a princess with beautiful red lips that covered even more wonderful white starry teeth. When she asked him if he wouldn’t like to be her husband, he immediately said yes. He believed her fake proposal but Suzie loves in reality her fiancé Jano Dúbravovie.

Ondráš was getting ready to wedding with Suzie, who only after that registered what absurdity she did. On the day when Suzie is getting married with Jano, Ondráš gets dressed in prepared wedding clothes because he thinks that the wedding is for him but, fortunately, his aunt locks him in a cell. The reason why she did it was that she didn’t want to see him cry, if he would get to know the truth.

Ondráš is quickly searching for something to open the cell with. Unfortunately, he managed it and he runs to his wedding. When he arrived there, he saw Suzie with Jano dancing happily. He disappointed went out of the house and sat on some wheels. In few minutes somebody screamed: “Fire!”. Firstly nobody registered it because they were having a fun. A little bit later people began to be in panic and majority ran away. Men suddenly observed somebody sitting nearby the shed and thought that he was the one who caused the fire and that’s why they spanned him to the fence. Later Suzie came to spanned Ondráš and released him. Although Suzie explained him that she hadn’t ever loved him, he thought that she married Jano only because he was late.

All of sudden, he heard Suzie’s mother crying that her most favourite gees is in fire. He decided to bring it off and ran in an ablaze shed. Unfortunately, the story ends really very tragically because at the end the burning billet fell down on Ondráš and the next day at his funeral there was only in coffin burned body of goose-shepherd but they couldn’t find the body of Suzie’s fiancé ...

To make a long story short, there were many situations in both stories which showed that they were much more different than the others and wanted to change the world. Finally they both had either to change their behaviour or die because of their immutability. So there wasn’t any success in their life.