Brief Summary Of The Book 'Friedrich' By Hans Peter Richter

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The book I read is called “Friedrich,” by Hans Peter Richter. The story takes place in Germany from 1929 to 1942, as Hitler comes to power. Friedrich Schneider is a Jewish child and is the main character of the book. The story is told by Friedrich’s non-Jewish friend who lives across the hall in the same apartment as him. Another important character is Herr Resch, the landlord. When the story begins the boys are four years old and interact for the first time as Friedrich brings toys to the narrator’s house. At the time, Friedrich’s family was much more wealthy primarily because his father was employed, unlike the narrator’s father. The two families are very close and go on different adventures together that all symbolize the difference in …show more content…

His father gets fired from the few jobs he was able to get, and their home gets ransacked by a group of people that the narrator sees a few chapters earlier on. The Schneider’s have nothing at this point and their mother becomes sick and ends up dying. The narrator and his family try to help out without being caught, but there isn’t much they can do. As the book comes to an end, there is an air raid. German civilians all ran to the public bunker where they would be safe, while Friedrich is forced to stay in his house. The helpless boy begs to get into the bunker, but is denied by Herr Resch. The narrator’s family comes back to find Friedrich passed out in the front yard of the apartments. Herr Resch never liked Friedrich, and ends up killing him in his sleep on the last page of the book saying, “His luck that he died this …show more content…

I do enjoy how the author chose to tell the story from the point of view of two children, which really allowed me to imagine what it would be like to live during these times. Another thing I liked was how the author used unique situations to portray the differences between the two families. In the beginning, the Schneiders were living comfortably and had to help out the narrator’s family, but that completely changed as the story progressed. I thought the author did a great job of bringing emotions into the story. Many times during the story a character begins to cry for whatever reason, and the author uses good descriptive language to really show us what’s going on. This descriptive language is used in all aspects of the story, like when Friedrich showed up to the narrator’s living quarters starving and filthy before the air raid. Every chapter of the book was a different event, and it had the year in which it occurred in parentheses next to the title. Even with this, it was difficult at times to figure out how old the boys were during each part of the story. I personally think the story should have had more details and more events. I would’ve liked to see the story progress a little slower, with a little bit more detail about the characters lives. In general, I think this book exceeded my expectations of a 138 page

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