Karel Capek published the book The War With the Newts in 1936. It was a satire on the policies of the Allies of Adolf Hitler. When a sea captain, Captain Van Toch, discovers a new species, he decided to train them to walk on their hind legs, and communicate. He also teaches them to dive for pearls. He receives money from the Dutch conglomerate to ship this new species, the Newts, to similar islands where pearl harvests have been impossible or unproductive. Eventually, it is determined that the Newts are valuable for the expansion and development of economic activities near the coasts and under the seas and develop a global marketplace for trade in their labor and bodies. Educated, well-equipped, and trained to use with the most advanced technologies,
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When denied these materials, the Newts use violence. The Newts are able to triumph because learned their habits from human tyranny and the Newts became power-hungry and exhibited expansionist behavior almost spontaneously. Most countries keep selling the Newts weapons and food, because it would be an economic catastrophe not to. Water begins to spread across every continent, and the remaining humans are pushed higher and higher into the mountains. The novel is a satire that examines contemporary European politics, such as fascism and colonialism. At the end of the novel the long-term history of the Newts is mapped out. The Newts will all but destroy the Earth's landmass, leaving only a small amount of humans to work for them in their factories. Eventually they will form separate countries and destroy themselves by committing the same follies as humanity then the humans will then inherit what remains of the earth. The novel was Capek way of saying that a huge catastrophe won’t be society’s downfall; it will be because of the state, economics and prestige. If we view the newts as representative of what humans have the potential to become, then we can see that our “war with the newts” is really a war with ourselves not to fall into the mediocrity of viewing the world through a lens of complacent fearfulness and “brainless” productivity “The question is: is or was man ever capable of …show more content…
van Toch turned crimson. "What?" he bawled. "You dirty Cuban, you think that I shall be frightened of your devils? We'll see about that," he cried, rising with all the greatness of his honest fourteen stones.” (Capek) Right away you see oppression in the novel. The dismissal of a native’s account and the dehumanizing of the “devils.” For the first or so of the novel, the newts are shown to be very adaptable, intelligent creatures; the humans around them are boorish, self-satisfied, rather bigoted individuals who deign to believe that the newts are suffering from this malign treatment. A whole host of social issues, ranging from slavery to the exploitation of the proletariat by the leisure classes, underlies this first part of the novel. While the newts have managed to gain some half-hearted recognition that they are not to be enslaved, the menial drudgery that they undertake in the coastal regions is supplemented by secretive arming plans by the Great Powers that are supplying "their" newts with undersea-adapted weapons. Yet despite this arms race, the Great Powers fail to grasp the demographic pressures facing the newts as their population swells to several times that of the human populations. Here, the echoes of Lebensraum are found in the increasingly strident demands of the hidden, secretive "Chief Salamander." When his demands are unmet, the newts unleash destructive explosive devices that cause massive earthquakes and the creation of new coastal
When denied these materials, the Newts use violence. The Newts are able to triumph because learned their habits from human tyranny and the Newts became power-hungry and exhibited expansionist behavior almost spontaneously. Most countries keep selling the Newts weapons and food, because it would be an economic catastrophe not to. Water begins to spread across every continent, and the remaining humans are pushed higher and higher into the mountains. The novel is a satire that examines contemporary European politics, such as fascism and colonialism. At the end of the novel the long-term history of the Newts is mapped out. The Newts will all but destroy the Earth's landmass, leaving only a small amount of humans to work for them in their factories. Eventually they will form separate countries and destroy themselves by committing the same follies as humanity then the humans will then inherit what remains of the earth. The novel was Capek way of saying that a huge catastrophe won’t be society’s downfall; it will be because of the state, economics and prestige. If we view the newts as representative of what humans have the potential to become, then we can see that our “war with the newts” is really a war with ourselves not to fall into the mediocrity of viewing the world through a lens of complacent fearfulness and “brainless” productivity “The question is: is or was man ever capable of …show more content…
van Toch turned crimson. "What?" he bawled. "You dirty Cuban, you think that I shall be frightened of your devils? We'll see about that," he cried, rising with all the greatness of his honest fourteen stones.” (Capek) Right away you see oppression in the novel. The dismissal of a native’s account and the dehumanizing of the “devils.” For the first or so of the novel, the newts are shown to be very adaptable, intelligent creatures; the humans around them are boorish, self-satisfied, rather bigoted individuals who deign to believe that the newts are suffering from this malign treatment. A whole host of social issues, ranging from slavery to the exploitation of the proletariat by the leisure classes, underlies this first part of the novel. While the newts have managed to gain some half-hearted recognition that they are not to be enslaved, the menial drudgery that they undertake in the coastal regions is supplemented by secretive arming plans by the Great Powers that are supplying "their" newts with undersea-adapted weapons. Yet despite this arms race, the Great Powers fail to grasp the demographic pressures facing the newts as their population swells to several times that of the human populations. Here, the echoes of Lebensraum are found in the increasingly strident demands of the hidden, secretive "Chief Salamander." When his demands are unmet, the newts unleash destructive explosive devices that cause massive earthquakes and the creation of new coastal