The glory and downfall of Énok Gereben – The construal of the social world of the narrative in Géza Ottlik’s School at the Frontier

Abstract

Set against the theoretical background of social cognitive pragmatics, this paper addresses the central question as to what directs readers’ attention during the construal of the social world of Géza Ottlik’s novel, Iskola a határon ‘School at the Frontier’ first published sixty years ago. By the analysis of alternative ways of creating orientation in the social world of the narrative – besides revealing that two characters (Medve and Bébé) are constantly set in the focus of attention – the paper points out the fact that the centre of the orientation among social relations is shifted to the two characters mentioned above with consistent frequency. The paper outlines that the prevailing of Medve’s and Bébé’s vantage points is crucial to how the social relations are construed.
Hence, the functioning of these vantage points initiates different patterns of relations between the individual and the community, solitude and companionship, power and solidarity, involvement and detachment, with all of these patterns mutually relativizing each other, thus inducing different social strategies which also mutually relativize each other. In order to illustrate the aforementioned, this paper details a case study presenting that in the novel, not exclusively the temptation of Medve, but the temptation of Bébé can be witnessed as well. However, when it comes to Bébé, the role of the tempter is not played by Tibor Tóth (who attained that Merényi and his band was given the sack) but by Énok Gereben who closely belongs to the Merényi circle. To give a detailed description of Gereben’s role in the novel, the paper also builds upon the analysis of Továbbélők ‘Those Living Onwards’ interpreted as an earlier version of Iskola a határon ‘School at the Frontier’ in which Gereben is not among the pupils given the sack – contrary to Iskola a határon ‘School at the Frontier’.