The cultural context that motivated the actions of the Nazis and the people of Germany was defined by the spirit of the time, or in other words, the zeitgeist of Post World War II, which focused greatly on the vulnerability experienced by the Germans and the promise of greatness and restoration of national pride that the Nazis were offering. Schlink captures this through the use of symbolism, allegory, analogy and characterisation and allows readers to view the time period from the perspective of an adolescent German. He also gives the reader an opportunity to develop a sense of empathy for the characters and subsequently for Germans during that time, who may still carry the guilt and burden of their World-War past. The relationship between Hanna and Michael becomes an analogy for the uncertainty, guilt and confusion of this …show more content…
The novel is essentially an allegory for the guilt shouldered by the Germans. Schlink only reveals Hanna’s crimes to the reader in Part 2 which allows us to sympathise with the character more. If he were to reveal Hanna’s crimes any earlier to the reader, they may not understand her motives. Schlink is intentionally ambiguous on this point. He doesn’t condemn Hanna but there is significance in the fact that we are not given the opportunity, as readers, to hear Hanna’s voice thus we do not receive a sense of her motivation. Michael's generation blame their parents to escape any guilt: "we all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst” (Schlink, 2008). Schlink suggests that Germans need to face the crimes of their country before they can be freed of guilt. Michael pursues a career in law which forces him to grapple with moral issues and later in the novel says, “maybe I did write our story to be free of it, even if I never can be,” (Schlink,
The Book Thief and The Devil’s Arithmetic both focus on the prejudice Hitler had on different types of people during World War II. Liesel and Hannah both lost someone they had dearly loved. Liesel lost Rudy and Hannah lost many members of her family. In a time of fearfulness, both had told stories to the people surrounding them. Although both were not seen as equal in the eyes of many during their time, I see them as courageous and brave heroes after what they underwent.
On Hitler’s Mountain is a memoir of a child named Irmgard Hunt and her experiences growing up in Nazi Germany. She herself has had many experiences of living during that dark time, she actually met Hitler, had a grandfather who hated Hitler's rule, and had no thoughts or feelings about the Nazi rule until the end of WWII. Her memoir is a reminder of what can happen when an ordinary society chooses a cult of personality over rational thought. What has happened to the German people since then, what are they doing about it today and how do they feel about their past? Several decades later, with most Nazis now dead or in hiding, and despite how much Germany has done to prevent another Nazi rule, everyone is still ashamed of their ancestors’ pasts.
In the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak the narrator is Death, who shows itself as sympathetic and sensitive towards the suffering of the world and the cruel human nature, through its eyes, we can get to know the heartbreaking story of Liesel Meminger an ordinary, but very lucky nine-year old German girl; living in the midst of World War II in Germany. In this book the author provides a different insight and observation about humanity during this time period from a German view and not an Allied perspective, as we are used to.
A Child of Hitler by Alfons Heck is an autobiographical account of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 from his perspective as a member of the Hitler Youth. Heck’s autobiography is abundant with emotional treatise and recollections from his childhood. Published in 1985, the book is targeted toward an adult audience. The overarching theme focuses on repentance and the overwhelming power of propaganda and the resulting passion produced by NSDAP indoctrination. Using this theme as guidance, Heck argues that Nazi propaganda was highly efficient and produced an indoctrinated generation that was consumed with Aryan and Third Reich superiority until the defeat of Germany in 1945.
The chaos and destruction that the Nazi’s are causing are not changing the lives of only Jews, but also the lives of citizens in other countries. Between Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are crucial to the survival of principle characters. Ironically, in both stories there is a foreseen future, that both seemed to be ignored.
The heavily proclaimed novel “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is a great story that can help you understand what living in Nazi Germany was like. Throughout the story, the main character, Liesel goes through many hardships to cope with a new life in a new town and to come to the recognition of what the Nazi party is. Liesel was given up for adoption after her mother gave her away to a new family, who seemed harsh at first, but ended up being the people who taught her all the things she needed to know. Life with the new family didn’t start off good, but the came to love them and her new friend, Rudy. As the book carried along, it was revealed that the Hubermanns were not Nazi supporters, and even took in a Jew and hid him in their basement later on in the book. Liesel became great friends with the Jew living in her basement, Max, who shared many similarities which helped form their relationship. Both of
The Forgotten Soldier is not a book concerning the tactics and strategy of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Nor does it analyze Nazi ideology and philosophy. Instead, it describes the life of a typical teenage German soldier on the Eastern Front. And through this examined life, the reader receives a first hand account of the atrocious nature of war. Sajer's book portrays the reality of combat in relation to the human physical, psychological, and physiological condition.
When the Holocaust is featured in literature, survival, interpersonal interactions, and resourcefulness of main characters is often shown. In Maus I and Maus II, Art Spiegelman utilizes the graphic novel format to tell the story of Vladek Spiegelman’s application of bilingual, bartering, and salesmanship skills to survive the tragic lifestyle of camps in the Holocaust. In contrast, in the memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel, Elie portrays his family’s manipulation of lack of faith, prior knowledge of basic first aide, and sale of Elie’s golden-crowned tooth to persevere through the suffering faced during the Holocaust. At the same time, Spiegelman’s stories Maus I and Maus II and Wiesel’s novel Night show the importance of interpersonal interactions and the struggle to survive through the eyes of Jews living during the Holocaust, the differences in how they employ their resources and how they remain alive cause an obvious divergence between the novels.
During the years 1933 to 1945 was the twelve years of the Third Reich, a regime that changed history and the world forever; Hitler youth, a branch of the Nazi Party, was officially formed in 1926, but did not become popular until Hitler’s term of service. This gave its members excitement and a chance to revolt against parents and schoolteachers. Millions of boys and girls who belonged to this group wore the name proudly. At a time when the Fatherland, Germany, was suffering from a inadequate, rickety government, high-unemployment, and prevalent poverty, the Nazi Party promised young Germans a great future within the country- if they become loyal members of Hitler’s’ Youth. These children lived by the motto “For the flag we are ready to die.” Melita Mashmann, a fifteen-year old member of the girls’ branc...
Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Bastards entails a Jewish revenge fantasy that is told through a counterfactual history of events in World War II. However, this story follows a completely different plot than what we are currently familiar with. Within these circumstances, audiences now question the very ideas and arguments that are often associated with World War II. We believe that Inglourious Basterds is a Jewish revenge fantasy that forces us to rethink our previous understandings by disrupting the viewers sense of content and nature in the history of World War II. Within this thesis, this paper will cover the Jewish lens vs. American lens, counter-plots with-in the film, ignored social undercurrents, and the idea that nobody wins in war. These ideas all correlate with how we view World War II history and how Inglourious Basterds muddles our previous thoughts on how these events occurred.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish people’s outlook on life. Wiesel’s identity transformed dramatically throughout the narrative. “How old he had grown the night before! His body was completely twisted, shriveled up into itself. His eyes were petrified, his lips withered, decayed.
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
A film bursting with visual and emotional stimuli, the in-depth character transformation of Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List is a beautiful focal point of the film. Riddled with internal conflict and ethical despair, Schindler challenges his Nazi Party laws when he is faced with continuing his ambitious business ideas or throwing it all away for the lives of those he once saw as solely cheap labor. Confronted with leading a double life and hiding his motivations from those allegiant to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Schindler undergoes numerous ethical dilemmas that ultimately shape his identity and challenge his humanity. As a descendent of a Jewish-American, Yiddish speaking World War II soldier who helped liberate concentration camps in Poland, this film allowed for an enhanced personal
Burdekin’s novel utilizes our current world’s history to produce a cautionary tale warning against a totalitarian government’s subordination of women. Totalitarianism is the absolute control of a location by one party; within Burdekin’s work, it is the control of the world by the Nazi regime. In the world of Swastika Night everything leads to some line of paternal German decent. The German ancestry according to “The Hitler Bible” is always one of patriarchy in which women are nothing more than reproductive animals to be used to create more Aryan men and Aryan power. Love warps into the dehumanized rape of women for increased power. Any history of women playing important roles in life is lost, and women are cast into roles of nothingness. This nothingness comes not only from Nazi Germany but also from all males of the human race. The women are considered subhuman and they themselves have no sense of self worth.