If literature is the magic of holding back time then writers are the magicians who captivate time in words. As time passes by several take birth and perish, but some people with their achievements and contributions leave their footprints on the sands of time. Such a creator is Etgar Keret and he created a completely new world through his stories along with the trademark approach of Israeli writers. Keret is trying to say in this story the manner how society approaches happiness. In addition, this story can be seen in a theological context, in particular, Judaism because Keret is Israeli and Judaism is the foundation of this nation.
Etgar Keret’s short writing “The Story about a Bus Driver who wanted to be God” is a very simple piece about a man, who is a bus driver and his specialty is that he never opened the door of the bus, which he drove for any passenger. No matter how much the passenger needed to get up on the bus, he never cared about them. He always followed his own principles and never deviated from that path. Even if he saw some school kids, who would run along with his bus hoping that the driver would look at them and stop to open the door for them. However, he had no pity for the students and even their loving stare and innocent faces did not melt him. Sometimes a few uptight and nervy people, in jackets, would bang on the door of the bus to stop it pretending that they were perfectly on time and the bus was actually late. The driver did not even stop for elderly women, who had groceries in their hands and would struggle to stop him. The driver did this not because he was mean but it was due to his ideology (Keret, p. 1).
The bus driver can be viewed as a metaphor for the state of Israel where the republic is hounded by neighboring countries from the time of its foundation. The Jews, who had been persecuted for centuries by the Christian masses of Europe in possibly every conceivable manner from being blamed for natural disasters to being degraded publicly for belonging to that religion to being tortured in gas chambers, had finally reached such a precarious stage of their existence by the time World War II ended, that they were left with no alternative to carving out a homeland for themselves. The formation of a separate Jewish nation, they believed, was the only guarantee of their very survival (Brundage, pp. 145-7).
That homeland had to be the biblical land of Israel, or none else, given the primacy of this nation to their history and culture; unfortunately for them, this was now Palestine, into which Arabs had been ossified for a full 13 centuries, ever since the birth of their own religion, Islam. The declaration of Israeli independence on May 14, 1948, was the culmination of a nearly 19-century old cherished dream of the motherland and achieved after a lot of bickering in the United Nations and the US. To worsen matters the Arab-Israeli peace talks seem to have collapsed. Iran, another threat, of course, is one of the many states who refuse to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel, and have referred again and again to its complete annihilation. As a result, the national approach of the state became extremely rigid and meticulous. Rules and laws became the order for survival. The ideology maintained by the bus driver is the manifestation of these aggressive and desperate measures taken by the nation for survival (Dos, pp. 47-48).
However, in the same notion, it can be stated that the story has a deep root in a theological context such as society’s supremacy over individualistic concerns, human compassion. This becomes evident when we find that the Bus Driver abandons his ideology and allows Eddie to enter the bus. It should be noted that Judaism demarcates the central eschatological concerns of early Christianity, which gradually evolved into a structured religion. Thielman notes that both Paul and Peter emphasize the concept of the Mosaic Law and Jewish participation and Jewish Christianity, thereby bringing about perfect synthesis in the Catholic Church. Thus, the parameters of brotherhood and compassion become extremely relevant in this context (Thielman, p. 49).
However, it should be noted that the author is completely successful in achieving what he intended to do and that is to defend well against all anti-humanistic applications within the parameters of the state law. It is true that the laws and ideologies are important for the survival of the state but at the same time it should be mentioned that the essence of a humane approach should never be lost and thus the author made sure that the compassion and brotherhood, that is the central theme of Judaism, is unearthed from the prison of the necessary evil under the given condition, the law. This is because without the intricate views of a religious reviewer it is hard to get the loose parts of the fallacies in form of calculation of the bus driver. According to a calculation made by him, in the story, he had found out that if someone was late for around 30 seconds and he opened the door of his bus for him, then that person would actually be losing whole 15 minutes from his or her precious life. In addition, if all the people in the society did the same thing then being just 30 seconds late meant that they all lost 15 minutes of their life. Also, if there were, say, 60 people present on the bus at a certain time, who had reached their stop on time and, thus had done nothing wrong would be losing 30 minutes for the ones who came late.
This way, it is obvious that anybody, who is a general reader, would fall into the trap of deconstructions of all the basic observations put forward. On the other hand and seen from a Judaist perception, rather than our usual western outlook, it is also a certain truth that on a certain note the basic intention of this story is to present a rejoinder to the lawmakers of the state and proclaims a high note of humane solidarity under the parameters of religious essence.
Another interesting theosophical context of this story is in the context of human suffering with Eddie’s failure to attain “Happiness” and the bus driver’s failure to become God. Eddie is engulfed by the pursuit of Happiness. He ran so fast that his chest started to pain but he was not prepared to lose Happiness. From the parameters of Jewish belief, it is obvious that the parameters of human suffering become evident with the experiences the characters face. The experiences have administered cruel shocks to that modernist prejudice. Some say that it is only through suffering that we learn the importance of critical evaluation, yet change is a certain thing. If one is to believe in a good creator, it is necessary to understand what kind of behavior leads to human fulfillment and happiness. There are those who believe that one way to do this is to treat others, as you would like to be treated yourself.
Both the suffering of Eddie and the willingness of the driver to become God are the manifestation of human wish and ramification of wish that is so evident in religious teachings. These elements came extremely close when Eddie asked the driver to stop the bus. The driver remembered the time before which he wanted to be a driver. Then he wanted to be God. It was a depressing memory for him as he could not become God but in some way, it was a joyful one too. He remembered that he had once wanted to be God so that he would be able to help people. He wanted to be kind and just to them and listen to their prayers and cries kindly. Thus, when he looked at poor Eddie begging him to open the door from the ground he could not take it anymore. He gave up his ideology and calculations and gladly opened the bus door for Eddie. Thus, the aspects of humane compassion won once the aspects of state view of the law were overlooked. The view of the aspects of compassion and humanistic appeal came full circle at the end of the story when, “they started moving, he looked in the rearview mirror and gave Eddie a sad wink, which somehow made the whole thing bearable” (Keret, p. 6).
Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer and his “The Story about a Bus Driver who wanted to Be God” is one of his most challenging and bold writings in English. It is completely honest, funny, and at the same time powerful and concise. It contains hidden facts intelligently entwined with the story. His writing style is irresistible and is a mixture of humor, tender but coarse language, and filled with cynicism. The story contains a little bit of random modern thoughts, the philosophy of Israel, and a lot of dark humor. It also has a little bit of anger, which is a trademark of most Israeli writers (Prawer, pp. 221-5).
However, the idea of the story is completely original and refreshingly good for people who enjoy dark, satirical humor. It is powerful and efficient on its own creating not only sadness but also a world of fantasy. It is a gem of a story, which leaves our minds with a wonderful but weird effect. It has a combination of a great vocabulary, which hits us straight in the heart and never loses its impact. It is out of the ordinary, quirky and amusing and where ideologies are all that society bread on, Keret shows us a satirical side of their thoughts and ideas. His characters represent everyday people from our lives recording their sour ironies of life.
They are mostly absurd and the characters are faced with challenges of love, justice, betrayal, and sadness. He leaves us to deal with tragic events of life with a light and soft touch. His plots deal with the stark realities of everyday life, create an atmosphere of fantasy, and are extremely simple. This story shows an obsessed bus driver who is strict with his schedule. However, his characters shift in their sentiments and are carelessly drawn. Since they are not strong, the story loses its stability and we sometimes even lose attention for general readers but from the point of view of the lust of happiness and the rigidity of the state, this story is a marvel of decentralized manifestation and exposure of emotions.
Works Cited
- Keret, Etgar; “The Story about a Bus Driver who wanted to be God”; pp. 1-6
- Thielman, Frank; Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach; Zondervan, (2005)
- Prawer, H A; The Kingdom of Mind (Dunedin: Allied Publishers 2004) pp. 221-5
- Brundage, C; War Canon Law (Melbourne: HBT Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 2000) pp. 145-7
- Dos, M; Advent of Motivation (Dunedin: Allianced Publications; 2001) pp. 47-48