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The Hitchhiking Game | Introduction

‘‘The Hitchhiking Game’’ was first published as part of a collection of Milan Kundera's stories entitled Laughable Loves. The story centers on a young couple on the first day of their vacation together. Driving along in the young man's sports car, they spontaneously engage in a ''game'' whereby the young woman takes on the pretend ''role'' of a seductive hitchhiker, and the young man takes on the role of the stranger who has picked her up along the side of the road. But the fantasy element of the ''game'' bleeds into the reality of the relationship, with dire emotional and psychological consequences for both parties.

''The Hitchhiking Game'' picks up on a recurring theme in the work of Milan Kundera, which concerns the ways in which sexual relationships become power struggles between individuals in a political and social climate in which the individual has no power over a repressive socialist state. This story also concerns a common theme in Kundera's work whereby jokes, humor, and games have serious implications. As Philip Roth has characterized the story in his introduction to Laughable Loves: ‘‘simply by fooling around and indulging their curiosity, the lovers find they have managed to deepen responsibility as well as passion—as if children playing doctor out in the garage were to look up from one another's privates to discover they were administrating a national health program, or being summoned to perform surgery in the Mount Sinai operating room.’’ The meaning and implications of the ''game'' for both the young man and the young woman are also based on the traditional virgin/whore dichotomy, whereby women are categorized according to their sexual behavior as either ‘‘good girls’’ or ‘‘bad girls.’’

The Hitchhiking Game Summary

The story begins with a young couple, on the first day of their vacation, driving along the road in the young man's sports car. Although they have been together for a year, the young woman is still shy around her boyfriend and is even embarrassed whenever she has to ask him to stop the car so she can go to the bathroom. The young man has had casual sexual relationships with many women, but likes this young woman because she seems to him to be "pure," as compared to other women he's encountered. The young woman wishes she were not so self-conscious about her body, and envies the kind of women who are more comfortable with their sexuality. She is especially jealous of the young man's attentions to other women, because she feels that other women can offer him a type of seductiveness which she is incapable of. She fears that she will one day lose the young man to such a woman.

At a rest stop, she gets out of the car to go to the bathroom, and he makes a point of embarrassing her by asking where she is going. When she comes out, the young man pulls up at the side of the road to let her back in the car. Because the scenario resembles that of a stranger picking up a hitchhiker along the road, they both spontaneously pretend that this is the case. As they ride along, they continue to act out this "game" of... » Complete The Hitchhiking Game Summary