Zorba the Greek

A jack of all trades hired as a foreman by the narrator, Alexis Zorba is a man of vast experiences. A one-time soldier, hawker, musician, and miner, Zorba has traveled from Greece to Russia, living life to the fullest, unencumbered by schooling, religion, family, nationalism, or any other grand belief. He approaches the narrator at a cafe in Piraeus and asks the narrator to hire him. The narrator is struck by his “taunting, sorrowful, uneasy” eyes, which are “full of fire” (22). Zorba is around sixty-five, “tall and lanky” with “sunken cheeks, a jutting jaw, protruding cheekbones, curly gray hair” (22). When the narrator takes Zorba with him to Crete, Zorba entertains the narrator with tales of his life, his lost faith in nationalism after spilling too much blood, his numerous affairs with women, along with his singing, dancing, and santuri playing. Zorba also expounds on the nature of freedom and God (disapproving of both), the narrator’s ascetic inclinations, and the narrator’s dreams of educating the peasants. While living with the narrator, Zorba has an affair with the aging former cabaret singer turned hotel owner, Madame Hortense, who he sees as “the entire female of the species” (54).

When the mine struggles, Zorba offers to lead the construction of a cable railway. He travels to Iraklio, the capital of Crete, for materials. Although the narrator instructs him to be back in three days, Zorba takes twelve to enjoy an affair with a woman called Lola. He and the narrator go up to the monastery to pay for permission to use the forest for the cable railway, and Zorba has no patience for their corruption and hypocrisy and so plots against the them, hoping to pay less to recoup the money he lost in Iraklio.

Zorba’s sensibilities lead him to encourage the narrator to have his own affair with the widow. He defends her when she is attacked and mourns her when she is murdered. Zorba also agrees to marry Hortense and is strongly affected by her death. All these experiences, plus the failure of the cable railway, bring the narrator and Zorba together, although Zorba judges the narrator as too attached to abstract thinking. After the narrator leaves, Zorba resumes traveling, eventually remarrying and owning a copper mine in Serbia. He dies standing at a window, crying out as he looks out to the mountains.

The impetus for the narrator’s trip to Crete, Stavridaki was once the narrator’s student. He is described as having “blue-green eyes” and a “chubby, youthful face” (17). “Refined, ironic, civilized,” the friend, embodies self-control (18). The narrator’s friend is a man of action who, despite knowing the limits of nationalism, goes to fight for his countrymen in the Caucasus. The narrator is greatly attached to his friend and often remembers their time together, as well as the pact between them. In this agreement, should either of them sense the other in danger, they will think of them intensely enough to warn him. The narrator feels a premonition at the end of the novel that is proven correct when he receives word of his friend’s death. The narrator’s attachment to his friend endures, and he dreams of him years later.

An aging former cabaret singer from France, Madame Hortense was left behind by the admirals of the Four Great Powers and left to make her fortune in Crete. The narrator describes as a “stumpy, paunchy little woman with dyed flaxen-blond hair” (40). Conscious of her lost youth, Hortense now runs the hotel where the narrator and Zorba stay when they first arrive on the island. Hortense claims that her intervention with the admirals, her former paramours, saved Crete. In response, Zorba nicknames her Bouboulina and they begin an affair that lasts through Zorba’s stay in Crete. When Zorba leaves for Iraklio, however, the narrator jokingly tells Hortense that Zorba will marry her. Hortense takes this seriously, and she and Zorba become engaged once Zorba returns. After Easter, however, Hortense falls ill and dies, an event that affects Zorba so deeply that he takes her parrot with him.