In the novel Fatelessness  by Imre Kertész, the author defines fate through Georg’s experience in the concentration camps and his interpretation of those experiences; in this way, Fatelessness is both a narrative of a young boy’s journey through the Holocaust and an exploration of what it means to experience a fate that isn’t Georg’s to begin with. Despite it being the title of the novel, it takes some mental gymnastics in order for readers to parse out what Kertész’s notion of fatelessness really means. This essay will explore Kertesz’s definition of fate as a property within the realm of human manipulation and the implications of surviving and living within the fate imposed upon many Jews by Nazi Germany.

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The first glimpse readers have of this notion of fate comes when the narrator tells a story from his childhood: that of the beggar and the prince who trade fates. The story upsets his friend, who says “that if our own qualities had nothing to do with it, then it was all pure chance, and if she could be someone else than the person she was forced to be, then ‘the whole thing has no sense,’ and that notion, in her opinion, ‘is unbearable’” (Kertész 37). From Georg’s recollection of this childhood story, readers are intended to recognize that fate is less like a birthmark and more like a distinct object, separate from the individual, which can be traded, disposed of, or even more dangerously, forced upon somebody. Furthermore, Kertész’s style is to use quotation marks to indicate passages that are on some level morally or intellectually wrong. Georg seems to recognize that his Jewishness is not intrinsic and that there is no difference in blood that has been fueling the antisemitism plaguing his life. He even recognizes that he’s being forced to live a certain life, a certain fate. What he opposes is the thought that the systemic oppression at the root of it all “has no sense,” and that it is “unbearable.” On the contrary, the remainder of the novel is Georg’s story of how he managed to bear a fate that is not of his choosing, a fate that is carefully constructed by what Georg imagines is a room full of powerful men: “…People would have had to meet to discuss this, put their heads together so to say…gentlemen in imposing suits, decorations on their chests, cigars in their mouths, presumably all in high command, who were not to be disturbed right then…” (111). The novel as a whole is meant to steer readers away from the idea of “nonsense,” or that the Holocaust is a tragedy, a mindless genocide. It is meant to establish the events of the Holocaust as having been planned out, strategized, and implemented intentionally. The millions of deaths were not casualties, but the purpose of it all; the death of those millions was the fate the Nazi’s intended for them.

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Above all, the narrator’s statement that “we ourselves are fate” (260) is a declaration on behalf of himself and those imprisoned by the Nazis – a declaration of agency, that everything means something, and that we make our fate through the steps we take. Georg tells readers of three means of escape in the camps: imagination, hiding, and attempting to run away (155-161). He even recognizes waiting in line upon arriving at Auschwitz as an opportunity to take those steps: “…You would therefore have to allow ten to twenty minutes before you reach the point where it is decided whether it will be gas immediately or a reprieve for the time being. Now, all this time the queue is constantly moving, progressing, and everyone is taking steps, bigger or smaller ones, depending on what the speed of the operation demands” (257). The author makes use of passive voice in this passage, a device effective here in making readers understand that this time, the trek from the train to the decision is not about the Nazis’ force, but about the prisoners’ steps. There are no actors in this particular scene who force Georg and the others to make certain moves; instead, they walk closer to the point where “it is decided…” These examples seem to be an effort on Kertész’s part to write a Holocaust novel unlike any other; sure, Georg’s fate as a prisoner in the concentration camps is forced upon him, but Georg is emphasized throughout the novel as a mindful actor within that fate. The move is an empowering one, and one that places responsibility for the outcome of prisoners’ lives in their own hands.

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Indeed, acknowledging the existence of fate the way it is commonly thought of – as something inevitable, something handed to individuals which they have no control over – is a disgusting perspective; owning that conception of fate would be to acknowledge that the Jewish people who die under the Nazi rule are fated to do so, are born in fact for that very purpose. Kertész clearly demonstrates otherwise throughout Fatelessness, using the novel as a means of redefining common conceptions about fate. The author acknowledges time and again that events don’t just “come about,” as though being moved by an unstoppable divine force. In fact, describing the group of men in suits with cigars in their hands, planning the mass extermination of Jews, gives a face to the creator of Georg’s fate and again defines fate as something that can be manipulated by humans as opposed to it being intrinsic to humans at birth.

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What’s more, that definition of fate as within human control implicates everyone – Georg and the other prisoners included. At the end of the novel, Georg attempts to explain to his uncles his newfound understanding of fate: “…But it was not quite true that the thing ‘came about’; we had gone along with it too” (257). At this point, Georg seems to take ownership – and also implores his uncles to take ownership – of everything that has happened to his family: “They too had taken their own steps. They too had known, foreseen, everything beforehand, they too had said farewell to my father as if we had already buried him, and even later on all they had squabbled about was whether I should take the suburban train or the bus to Auschwitz…” (260). With these passages, Kertész masterfully acknowledges that in arguing for Jewish agency and against post-war perceptions of Jews solely as victims, he inevitably argues for Jewish responsibility. It is not as though the Jews are to blame for the Holocaust; that type of victim blaming has its own disastrous consequences. Instead, Kertész implicates Georg’s uncles as being amongst those who believe in fate as an intrinsic human property, and this is the passage in which readers are invited to recognize the consequences of that belief. Georg attempts to make his uncles recognize that, in conceiving of his father’s fate as immutable and predestined, they are unable to recognize anything they might have done to help him; in saying goodbye to his father as if he’d already died, Georg says, he and his uncles had damned him.

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The word “fatelessness” implies a state of being fateless, which is arguably the state the narrator is in by the end of the novel. The narrator establishes that he lives through a fate, but it isn’t his own fate (259) – it is a fate of the Nazis’ choosing, one that is forced upon him, engulfing his identity, tacking on a yellow star, until he becomes it.  Again the narrator draws from his childhood reading to understand the meaning of his fate: “‘But seven days with me means seven years to you,’ the king tells him. Well, I can say exactly the same about the concentration camps. I would never have believed, for instance, that I could become a decrepit old man so quickly. Back home that takes time, fifty or sixty years at least; here three months was enough for my body to leave me washed up” (165). Yet again Kertész overturns a common conception of fate – fate as something fulfilled only when the individual dies. Georg, still a young teenager at the end of the novel, declares that he has lived a fate that isn’t his; indeed, this passage in which readers see Georg reflecting about his decomposing body gives readers the sense that Georg ages exponentially in the concentration camps; it is almost as though Georg’s “death” – his fulfillment of his forced fate – comes when he leaves the camp. His leaving the camp, therefore, is a rebirth of sorts, which is why readers can recognize Georg as being fateless at the end of the novel. It is perhaps the ultimate freedom, and from what Kertesz has shown readers about the properties of fate throughout the novel, readers can find hope in Georg’s ability to choose a new fate for the rest of his life – but not, of course, by forgetting what he experiences in the camps. The act of referring back to childhood stories is another way the narrator tells us that it all means something; to put it another way, Georg’s time in the concentration camps and his memory of childhood stories, smashed together with all the other events – big and small – in his life, come together in a way that makes clear that it all means something and above all has a purpose.

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Kertész’s redefining fate – and, moreover, defining the absence of fate (fatelessness) as the ultimate freedom – is a project of major importance; the novel moves the audience away from the inclination that individuals are fated to have certain experiences and have no say in changing them. Kertesz’s project is one that, above all, attempts to disavow the world from justifying the ends of an evil regime.  

 

 

 

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Works Cited

Kertész, Imre. Fatelessness. Trans. Tim Wilkinson. New York: Random

House, 2004. Print.