Due Date: 8th April 2005 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Long Essay Question 2: Knowing about the writer of a literary text can shape significantly the way that it is read. Consider the effect of the writer’s context on your understanding of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is the product of a political and social genius: it is a comment on Germany and society in general and is, as its author, Heinrich Boll would have it described, “a pamphlet disguised
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Boll Authors often use characters within their novels to show the consequences of challenging cultural boundaries and, in turn, display their own personal concerns. It is not uncommon for characters to reflect an author’s ideology regarding social groups in their contemporary time periods. It is clear that this is certainly the case with the 1975 novel The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, (also referred to as How Violence Develops and Where it Can Lead)
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Knowing about the writer of a literary text can shape significantly the way that it is read. Consider the effect of the writer’s context on your understanding of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. “As a writer of fiction Böll was interpreting history, creating patterns of meaning, ordering his material to enable his reader to make sense of it.” The experiences of Böll and his values that arose from these events have been influential on the content and themes of
the texts feature protagonists who are put on trail for crimes that they were, in one way or another, unaware that they had committed. Meursault in The Outsider shoots an Arab man on a beach in a haze of sensory turmoil, while Katharina in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum has the misfortune to fall for a convicted murderer and is accused first of helping him make his escape and later of being involved with his criminal offences. Also common to both books is the corruption of facts, either because
Heinrich Böll uses his novel, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, to attack modern journalistic ethics as well as the values of contemporary Germany. The structure of this novel is important to conveying his message. He uses a police report format, differences in chapter lengths, narrator or author intervention, a subtitle, and the extensive use of the 'puddle' metaphor. All these things contribute towards the message in the text. The puddle metaphor is the most significant device used in the structure