Narrative and Ideological Discourses

This book deals with narrative representations of the story of the Mašín brothers who in 1951 established what they called ‘a resistance group' against the Communist regime and killed three people. They escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1953, heading for West Berlin. Despite being hunted by more than 20,000 East German and Soviet troops, the Mašín brothers together with Milan Paumer got to West Berlin safely. The book analyzes a historical book and a novel from the post- communist Czech Republic. It also examines two narratives about the Mašín brothers produced in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. Whereas in the narratives produced in Communist Czechoslovakia the Mašíns are depicted as murderers, in the narratives published after 1989, they are portrayed as freedom fighters. This book analyses these narrative representations from a narratological point of view and assesses how their structures are related to the values, beliefs and opinions they promote. The semiotic and narratological approach (Porter Abbott, Seymour Chatman) is used as are contemporary critical theory (Roland Barthes, Theun A. van Dijk) and theory of history (Hayden White).