Plot
The city, which is never referred to by name (however, it is likely Berlin), is crowded by a growing number of jobless and marked by increasing violence between left and right. The novel starts out in the seedy milieu of bars where prostitutes mingle with the hopeless flotsam that the war left behind. While Robert and his friends manage to make a living dealing cars and driving an old taxi, economic survival in the city is getting harder by the day. It is in this setting that Robert meets Patrice Hollmann, a mysterious beautiful young woman with an upper middle class background. Their love affair intensifies as he introduces her to his life of bars and races and Robert's nihilistic attitude slowly begins to change as he realizes how much he needs Pat.
The story takes an abrupt turn as Pat suffers a near-fatal lung hemorrhage during a summer holiday at the sea. Upon their return, Robert and Pat move in with each other but her days in the city are numbered, as she is scheduled to leave for a Swiss mountain sanatorium come winter. It is this temporal limitation of their happiness which makes their remaining time together so precious.
After Pat has left for Switzerland, the political situation in the city heats up and Lenz, one of the comrades, gets killed by a militant, not mentioned in the book by the actual name but supposed to be a Nazi. On top of this, Otto and Robert face bankruptcy and have to sell their workshop. In the midst of this misfortune, a telegram arrives informing them of Pat's worsening state of health. The two remaining comrades don't hesitate and drive the thousand kilometers to the tuberculosis sanatorium in the Alps to see her.
Reunited, Robert and an increasingly moribund Pat celebrate their remaining weeks before her inevitable death amidst the snow-covered summits of Switzerland. It is in the last part of the book that this beautiful love story finds closure and leaves the main character, a nihilist who has found love, forever changed.
Read more about this topic: Three Comrades (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)