Kallocain by Karin Boye

     

Title: Kallocain (Originally written in Swedish)

Originally published: 1940
Dates read: 9/1/18-9/14/18
Back to the Classics category: Single Word Titled Classic
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.

Author: Karin Boye
Karin Maria Boye was born in Sweden in 1900 and was a poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the leading poets of Swedish modernism. At the age of 9, she was awarded the first prize in a magazine competition for a children's picture story. She took piano lessons and wrote poems at the early age of l0.

She studied at the universities of Uppsala (studied Greek and Scandinavian languages and literary history) and Stockholm (studied history) - she graduated with a BA from both. Boye became a leading figure in the Clarté Socialist movement and propagated psychoanalytical theory and modernistic literary views. At 29, she taught at a secondary school and married Leif Björk - four years later they got divorced. From 1932-1933, Boye went through psychoanalysis in Berlin and then moved back to Sweden. During World War II, in 1941,  Karin Boye committed suicide. (source; source)

Description on back of book:
This is a novel of the future, profoundly sinister in its vision of a drab terror. Ironic and detached, the author shows us the totalitarian Worldstate through the eyes of a product of that state, scientist Leo Kall. Kall has invented a drug, Kallocain, which denies privacy of thought and is the final step towards the transmutation of the individual human being into a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism." For, says Leo, "from thoughts and feelings, words and actions are born. How then could these thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn't the whole fellow-soldier belong to the state?"

Favorite quotes:
"The accusations have increased steadily for the last twenty years. But that need not mean that crime has increased. It means that fear has increased. We have developed towards ever stricter supervision, and it has not made us more secure, as we had hoped, but rather more insecure. With our fear grows also our impulse to strike out."

 "I have noticed that from certain persons there emanates such a strong radiation from their life philosophy that they are a threat even when they say nothing."

"I'm here then. As it had to be. A question of time, to tell the truth. Are you willing to listen to the truth, you? All are not truthful enough to hear the truth, that's the sad thing."

Review:
I wanted to like this book, I really did - but it kind of just fell flat for me. The writing was bland and the characters, even Leo Kall - the main character, did not have much depth. I wanted to know more about the society and get lost in it, but I just couldn't. It was an intriguing story, but by the time I was halfway through, I felt like nothing had really happened. The book should have been much longer and should have gone into much more detail (both in regards to the society as a whole as well as the individual characters). It makes me want to read 1984 by George Orwell again to compare the two books.

Overall, it does have an intriguing story idea - what happens when a "truth" serum (called Kallocain) is made and makes people share their innermost thoughts without any inhibition? What was neat to me is that there's an arch to what is discovered by Kallocain. The serum initially is supposed to weed out the few who have negative thoughts about the Worldstate, but then you find out that nearly everyone does - so everyone could potentially be considered a criminal. This then means the Worldstate is essentially able to arrest whoever they want and keep them contained - the irony is that most people who are administered Kallocain actually experience the most freedom they've had for their entire lives. This freedom comes because, for the first time, they can speak freely and truly be themselves as an individual instead of just being part of the collective - even though the effects of the drug are only temporary and people are then arrested.

Towards the finish I got excited about a good ending due to realizations different characters had, but, as this is a dystopian novel, it circled back on itself and ended on a negative note. I won't give it away, but, despite the sad ending, there is hope. If you have any interest in dystopian/totalitarian novels, then I would suggest reading this book, even though it is a bit bland.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Karin Boye have the last words:

"Perhaps a new world can come into being through those who are mothers - whether they are men or women, and regardless of whether they have borne or not. But where are they?"