Chris_P's Reviews > Little Man, What Now?

The young man looked at Pinneberg. Pinneberg looked at the young man. Both of them were smartly dressed. Pinneberg was obliged to look respectable in his job. Both of them had washed and shaved, both had clean nails and both of them were white-collar workers.
But they were enemies, deadly enemies, because one of them was sitting behind the counter and the other was standing in front. The one wanted what he considered to be his rights; the other regarded it as an imposition.

The above passage which describes the encounter between the protagonist and a public servant, takes place in early '30s Berlin. So does the next one, which takes place between a young employee and her boss.

‘What I do outside work is my own business!’ exclaimed the girl. She seemed to have stopped crying.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Mr Spannfuss earnestly. ‘Seriously wrong. Mandels feeds you and clothes you, Mandels provides the wherewithal of your very existence. It’s not unreasonable to expect that you should think of Mandels first in everything you do and don’t do.’

And just to make the point clearer:

‘The firm makes your private life possible, sir! The firm comes first, second and third. After that you do what you like. We take on the burden of providing you with your daily bread. You’ve got to understand that. You live off us. You’re punctual enough collecting your pay at the end of the month.’

I could quote the whole book but I don't think it's necessary. I'm devastated to say that these passages could be straight out of an ordinary day in Greece of the 2010s.

The book follows the struggles of a young couple and their newborn son to make ends meet in a bureaucratic system where jobs are hard to come by and which, when found, resemble slavery. Wages are a joke, expenses are absurdly high and people are left on the street with hardly any reason at all. I wish I could say Little Man, What Now is your typical dystopian but that's hardly the case. It's rather an extremely realistic novel published in 1932.

What really makes Little Man, What Now painful to read is that Fallada makes no use of melodramatic elements and teardrenched descriptions. He tells his story as it would have occured in real life. He includes every little thing that makes up reality, like humor, silly blunders made by the inexperienced housewife, the naïve but also cute little romantic goings-on between the couple and the desperate optimism that youth inspires in people even when one's world crumbles to pieces. But that's not all. At the same time, Fallada perfectly captures the constant anxiety one feels when one has to desperately and unavailingly beg for a job, any job, the loss of dignity that comes when one is kicked out of one's job just because one didn't meet the monthly goal for example, and the ever-burning flame of "how will I feed my child when I can't even provide for myself" which slowly devours a person from inside out. When the Little Man grows even smaller by the day, any sense of dignity evaporates along with the joys he should be feeling but he's not. "How can I look anyone in the face?" asks Pinneberg (Sonny) after he's hit bottom. These are feelings that noone can understand unless they have experienced them themselves.

From the immaculate depiction of the degenerate human relations under such circumstances to that of the bosses' cruelness towards their employees, Little Man, What Now is a journey into the darkest night. A night that has nothing to do with dystopic dictatorships and science fictions. A night that is sponsored and kept alive by a democracy created by the rich for the rich. A night haunted by the ever-present spirits of Sonny, Lammchen and their Shrimp, desperately yearning to celebrate the coming of the day.

And suddenly the cold had gone, an immeasurably gentle green wave lifted her up and him with her. They glided up together; the stars glittered very near; she whispered: ‘But you can look at me! Always, always! You’re with me, we’re together …’