Sometimes a novel can communicate more with the stories it chooses not to tell, rather than the ones it does. In Sandor Marai's brooding, claustrophobic drama Embers, such is the case with Krisztina, Henrik's wife, a woman already long dead at the start of the novel. Although essential to the narrative structure and representing a third of the original hunting party, Marai forms the character of Krisztina as a real cipher. Her character is first called simply “the new countess” (11); his name is mentioned, entire chapters later, only by conversational reference (71). Her first trait revealed: she was fond of crayfish (71). Krisztina's minimalist development, however, is far from banal. Although subtle, it is nevertheless essential to the work's overarching themes of emotional abandonment, the stifling social order, and the true cost of honor. Cursed to love men too proud to love themselves, the woman's brief and tragic life is reflected in the text by the perpetual shadow cast over the characters who survive her. By leaving a primary perspective vacant in the novel, Marai fashions Krizstina as the embodiment of loss brought about by systemic emotional neglect, a collective social destiny in which prideful misunderstandings, prejudices, and honor inequalities deprive individuals of their identity itself. no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Although faint and sparse, Krisztina's voice resonates overwhelmingly through the pages of the novel. In a memory of Nini, the devoted caretaker, a first glimpse of her stifling world is offered: “There is something I need to tell you. When Krisztina was dying, she called you. » “Yes,” said the general, “I was there.” “You were there and yet you weren’t there. You were so far away that we could have been on a trip. You were in your room, and she was dying, alone with me, around dawn. for you. I say this because you should know this tonight. The general said nothing. (74) Marai does not reveal his exact last words; even in her final moments, Krisztina is condemned to speak through others. Underplayed by the domestic context of dinner preparation, the extent of Henrik's cruelty in these final moments is obscene. A virtual devil, but with a stiff upper lip, Henrik's behavior symbolizes a social code that has no empathy for those perceived to be in the wrong. In the opulent and ruthless world of aristocracy, rights subjugate humanity for the small transgression of youthful infidelity. , Krisztina's is literally doomed to die alone, deprived of love, respect and companionship, except the most superficial. Her pain as a human being is not perceived as such, by her culture or by her husband. It is considered pain. of an unfaithful wife, a fate duly deserved by her transgressions. To seek justice in such a cruel morality is to find only the vast waste of its victim's life, a void encapsulated by the general's inability to even give. the weakest of the answers. Once freed by the schnapps, however, the general finally finds the wit necessary to elucidate Krisztina's life, lighting a small but steady flame against the darkness of her death. He remembers, “She was like an animal…underneath she was wild and untamable” (175). Although told with tenderness, this memory contains a thread of bitter irony. This spark of life, this display of conventions, is exactly what Henrik is unable to cope with, breaking completely upon learning of her love affair with Konrad...