I have just finished reading Válka s mloky (War with the Newts) to keep up my Czech. Čapek wrote the novel in four months, and it took me almost that long to read it. As reading practice for a non-native speaker, it is perfect because a lot of different vocabulary comes up: economic, historical, political, scientific, comedic etc… and the style changes frequently which prevents it from becoming monotonous. In my opinion however the novel becomes less and less “tight” as it progresses. The first book “Andrias Scheuchzeri” was the funniest, and presents in outline the concept of the whole book. I almost think that if one was short on time, or reading the book as part of a class, the first book (156 pages) would be enough.
The primary question of interpretation is what do the “mloky,” the newts, represent, if anything? My first thought was that they stood for exploited humanity. They represented the slaves of all time. But this would be rather insulting to the victims of human slavery, to portray them as animals, who, throughout the whole book, though they learn to speak, never express themselves or develop their own culture. Rather, they are presented as a homogenous, terrifying mass.
My second thought was that they represented a supernatural, or more accurately, a superhuman force, perhaps the force of Nature herself, who had risen up to chastise a humanity which had overstepped its bounds. The problem with this is that Čapek explicitly stated that the demise of humanity in the book was not due to a “cosmic catastrophe” but to quotidian reasons of “state, economics and prestige.” Čapek meant to portray humanity’s self-destruction as just that, self-destruction, but in that case what meaning do the newts have, why are they necessary to story at all?
So then perhaps the newts represent some leaven of self-destructiveness within humanity itself? Or do they represent nothing at all, but are just a neutral tool that happened to be there, like in the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey :
But now that I’ve thought about it, I think the newts represent the dehumanized humanity Čapek saw industrial Capitalism as creating. Necessities of profit, expansion, and power create a de-individualized humanity ripe for totalitarian control. The newts, who are initially portrayed sympathetically, gradually become an anonymous and insatiably expanding mass as they are turned to profit by state and industrial greed. This dehumanized mass, created by the machinery of Capitalism, is then in turn especially vulnerable to ideologies such as Fascism or Communism (never explicitly mentioned in the book).
Again here, though, there is the problem of the objectification of the victim, which I’m not sure Čapek thought about.
recycled paper clips 