My comb

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The "circular jag", the symbol of the fictional movement in the novel. It represents a trident piercing a bald head.

My comb is a novel by Ephraim Kishon .

content

In this satirical novel, Ephraim Kishon describes how a sensational newspaper article developed into a national movement for the destruction of all bald heads.

From a first-person perspective, he tells the story of the failure Rudolph Flinta, who at the beginning of the story is fired by his bald boss. When he comes home, he is expected by Pepi, his useless and constantly drunk friend whose full name is never known.

Together they blaspheme the boss's baldness and so it comes up with the idea that Pepi could write an article about Flinta's boss in the newspaper he works for. From this article, which he signs with Joseph Schomkuthy, by chance and a few new articles Pepi develops a theory about the alleged inferiority of bald heads.

Bald people are marginalized and Pepi begins his increasingly frequent article on the bald issue with Joseph Schomkuthy junior. to sign and is becoming more and more popular. Flinta is made an icon of the new movement and critical voices are defamed. When a wig manufacturer offered Flinta profit-sharing in its business, the idea began to bear fruit.

Soon after, the two decide to form a party and therefore draw Dr. Schwarzkopf, a lawyer, came to the rescue. With him they found the "First National Hair Protection Party and Kreiszackler Front (NHPKF)". The circular zag, an allusion to the swastika, becomes the symbol of their party; Like the Hungarian Arrow Cross , they call themselves circular zackers . The goal is to exclude all bald people from public life as much as possible and to completely disenfranchise them. Your party greeting is "Patience we win - long live Flinta". Although they all know about the nonsense of the so-called hair protection, they incite the people more and more. It comes to pogroms and make the three party leaders, everyone behind the backs of others to do business with wig producers, hair tonic producers and glasses (alluding to the windows, which were destroyed during the riots, and thus indirectly to the November pogroms in 1938 ).

After Flinta is attacked by government thugs and has to be hospitalized, he is finally declared a hero and worshiped by the whole people. At the same time, the party also receives help from the government of another country and so the NHPKF becomes the ruling party. Laws are being passed dividing hairless people into different classes and deprived of almost all rights.

However, Schwarzkopf soon notices how he was told by Flinta and Pepi, who is now Dr. Joseph von und zu Schomkuthy jun. calls, is betrayed, and forms his own party. When the country that had previously helped her party to bring an unstable government to power now also declares war on the country, the decline cannot be stopped. The country is overrun and eventually Flinta is locked in a madhouse. At the end of his story he mentions that his hair is slowly beginning to fade.

Intentions

Kishon wrote an original version of the novel at the end of the Second World War in a hiding place in the basement of a bombed-out house. With him he processes his own experiences of the persecution of the Jews and draws a parody of the leadership of the Third Reich . With the fact that bald people are haunted in his novel, Kishon has two goals; he ridicules the actually terrible crimes of Rudolph Flinta in order to make him more lovable, and at the same time shows that people don't care what minority they exclude, no matter how absurd.

expenditure

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