"The Red Carnation* is a small masterpiece of a harmless-looking, photographically (more precisely, phonographically) recording of everyday life, which, however, looks more than alienated - there is so much self-exposure in every replica of the characters, whose consciousness is “spoken out” at every step. When two Not the first time people who found each other through a marriage advertisement set up their first date in a cafe, then they choose a carnation as an identification mark. This “sign” here is a completely ironic rivet, because it covers up the grinningly desperate, truly animal struggle of egoisms. struggle is, in Schnurre’s interpretation, the essence of modern marriage. The weaker sex invariably gains the upper hand in this struggle: the woman seems to be compliant, pliable, accommodating, flexible, but all this is just an external flair, used as a weapon of struggle, the last word invariably remains with her; Only she achieves the goal. The rude, smug, unceremonious “he” in “Carnation” ultimately accepts “her” conditions for future coexistence.