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"The Bed" is a very important place where parts of
the story take place : our hero is convinced in a bed, he is born there and
also dies there. During his life he often hides in bed, he rests there,
dreams there and also lives there, the same as everyone else. Bed is also
the place which in the end both symbolically and factually connects him in
the other world with this real world.
We meet Lubosh Urna - forty year old main hero of "The Bed" - in
a moment when he is
dying and leaving this world. The immediate reason of his death is banal
and at the same
time tragicomic, same as the situation in which it happens. We could even
say Lubosh's
end resembles most of the events in his life. From early youth to grown-up
age.
He has been given birth by a woman, he grows up among women, he gets
married to a woman, he has two children with her - both women of course-,
he works among women
and in the end he dies amongst women.
Lubosh does not feel too much self-pity over his fate, he does not see it
as fatal. On the contrary, he guides us through his grotesquely-bizarre
life in a matter-of-fact manner and comments even the most fantastic
situations with dry rationalism. The extreme emotions appear in separate
events, not in their orders, or in Lubosh's evaluation.
His colourful description of experiences, both real and unrealistic, in the
way they are
blended, slowly reveal Lubosh's life story which seems to be an absurd
grotesque with
a very unexpected and shocking ending. On the border between life and death
Lubosh
comes to a certain recognition that is a shock to him as well as to the
audience.
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