Moc bezmocných jako legitimizační vyprávění

The article is concerned with an analysis of Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless from the perspective of narratology and of the Barthean mythology. The persuasive power of the essay derives not only from Havel’s diagnosis of the collective mendacity in the “normalized” Czechoslovakia but above all from the author’s deft use of various literary devices. From this vantage point The Power of the Powerless cannot be considered an accurate mirror of Czecho-slovak society but, instead, a closely knit symbolic field which projects a specific semantic perspective. This paper focuses on the narrative techniques employed by Havel to create such a perspective.