“Fritz” explores the elusive nature of memory. The two main characters, Shankar and Jayanto, are on a trip together in Bundi, Rajasthan. Out of many possible destinations in the region, they have chosen Bundi because Jayanto had visited it as a child and wants to see how it compares to his childhood memories. While they are there, Jayanto is able to recall more and more about his time there, and the act of remembering becomes the primary driver of the plot, propelling it toward its eerie conclusion.
This remembering process particularly comes into focus around Fritz, a one-foot-long, incredibly lifelike figure of an old man that one of Jayanto’s uncles had bought him in a small village in Switzerland. As a child, Jayanto had brought Fritz to Bundi, where it was destroyed by two stray dogs. This memory deeply haunts Jayanto, disturbing him to the point that he imagines Fritz coming (back) to life and walking across his chest while he sleeps. In an attempt to assuage Jayanto’s fears and anxiety, Shankar arranges to dig up Fritz from his old burial spot. However, instead of the doll’s remnants, they see a bare, doll-sized, human skeleton.
As the story depicts it, then, memory is not simply the story one tells about the past, but rather serves as the past’s entryway into the present. While back in Bundi as an adult, Jayanto’s childhood memories of Fritz slowly trickle in. At first, this process is unconscious: strolling through the garden after tea, Jayanto suddenly recalls a deodar tree but is only able to connect its significance vaguely to “a European.” The reader eventually learns that the European is, of course, Fritz, and the deodar tree marks the spot where Jayanto buried him after his untimely end. Indeed, the more Jayanto uncovers about his past, especially as it relates to Fritz, the more anxious and depressed he becomes. These altered mental and emotional states are linked to the disheartening realization that he had preserved a false image of his childhood in his mind. In the end, Fritz’s true identity remains shrouded in mystery, and the reader is left with more questions than answers. In this way, the story suggests that human memory is not only unreliable, but it also has the capacity to fundamentally distort the truth about the past.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Elusive Nature of Memory ThemeTracker
The Elusive Nature of Memory Quotes in Fritz
He had always wanted to return after growing up, just to see how much the modern Bundi compared to the image he had in his mind.
“You know, Shankar, it is really quite strange. The first time I came here I used to sit cross-legged on these chairs. It seemed as though I was sitting on a throne. Now the chairs seem both small in size and very ordinary. The drawing-room here used to seem absolutely enormous. If I hadn’t returned, those memories would have remained stuck in my mind.”
“But why did you suddenly think of a tree?”
[…] “I can’t remember that now. Something had brought me near the tree. I had done something here. A European…”
“European?”
“No, I can’t recall anything at all. Memory is a strange business…”
“But once I had Fritz, I forgot all my other toys. I played only with him. A time came when I began to spend hours just talking to him. Our conversation had to be one-sided, of course, but Fritz had such a funny smile on his lips and such a look in his eyes, that it seemed to me as though he could understand every word. Sometimes I wondered if he would actually converse with me if I could speak to him in German. Now it seems like a childish fantasy, but at the time the whole thing was very real to me.”
“In other words, Fritz did not exist for me anymore. He was dead. […] I buried him under that deodar tree. I had wanted to make a coffin. Fritz was, after all, a European. But I could find nothing, not even a little box. So, in the end, I buried him just like that.”
I had no doubt that Jayanto had only had a bad dream. All those childhood memories had upset him, obviously, and that was what had led to his dreaming of a cat walking on his chest.
If Jayanto could actually be shown that that was all that was left of his precious doll, he might be able to rid himself of his weird notions; otherwise he would have strange dreams every night and talk of Fritz walking on his chest.
