The Banality of Evil and the Corruption of Morality in Heinrich Böll’s "Like a Bad Dream"

In Heinrich Böll’s Like a Bad Dream, we have the theme of the banality of evil, corruption, inherent conflict between moral values, and material success, and power relations. Unfortunately, it is a fact that sometimes some people break bad and be involved in corruption just to gain more money, just like the married, upwardly mobile young couple, and the Zumpens in the story. The story mainly deals with corruption, and how easily greed may lead you to corruption. We can say that this is the story of a test of integrity, especially for the protagonist, but he fails. Maybe partly because of her wife.

We do not know the name of the narrator, but his wife is called Bertha, and everything about her screams "a dominant female figure" as she takes control of the situation, meanwhile it is clear that the narrator is not that experienced in business and does not know what to do. On the other hand, Bertha is an expert on it just like her father, and she is using the contract they are working on to "educate" her husband, to show him how to business is actually done and get him involved in the business. She is educated and trained in this matter. We learn that she went to a religious boarding school, and while sometimes she acts like she is a religious person as we can understand from the: "One should never," she said gently "mention Christ's name in connection with money!" part, she is not sincere in her believes since she is involved in something unethical. She knows about what to wear, which movements to follow, and she knows about manners and society. Bertha knows about how to offer to the community, and we can feel her weight on the protagonist. She does not only show support, but she goes beyond support, she is actively involved in the process, and also she leaves no personal space for his husband. The protagonist cannot show his true colors.

There's a change gradually taking place between the protagonist and her wife in the story since she takes more control than she used to, takes the law in her own hands, the protagonist starts losing interest in her. We can feel that he feels humiliated, and manipulated. He feels like a useless figure male figure because Bertha is taking his place.

While the narrator is kind of afraid of what is going on around him and thinks that the whole deal, the fact that they got involved in corruption just like it is a normal thing is "like a bad dream", his wife is courageous and confident. It is obvious that the narrator is shocked by her wife's actions since she becomes a willing participant of something unethical. As I stated before, it all seems like a bad dream to him, and that leaves us and him to question if the pursuit of gaining more money is worth the agony of compromising someone's moral convictions.

It seems like he is the only one who feels guilty because he ignored his principles -of doing a job, in life- he acted against his principles, while everyone else in the story, her wife, the chairman Mr. Zumpen and her wife Mrs. Zumpen do not feel guilty of their crime. In fact, corruption is like second nature to them. They do it so naturally that it seems like it's a natural thing even though it is certainly not. Böll's use of language is quite simple in the story, and the tone of the story is pretty mundane, which supports the “banality of evil" theme of the story perfectly as that makes it seems like a natural thing.