Christa Wolf Analysis

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Christa Wolf tells a tale about a woman, Cassandra, the story’s narrator, a princess of Troy in Anatolia, a seer, and a priestess of the god Apollo. In many ways, this is both a feminist and an anti-war novel. The struggle between patriarchy and matriarchy was present throughout the story and can still correlate in some ways today. The whole story is seen and experienced through a women’s eyes which gives a different perspective of war and why it is prominent. This idea parallels the position of many women in Wolf’s time, showing how they were dominated and suppressed. Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of being able to see the future but since she turned down his advances, she was cursed with the notion that nobody believes her prophesies. Cassandra …show more content…

But beyond the problem with Helen, Cassandra wants her people to understand just how much the war has affected her society. The kingdom of Troy used to have a balance between matriarchy and patriarchy. For example, Queen Hecuba and King Priam used to participate in the government together. However, since the war started, Priam doesn’t allow Hecuba to meet with the council. Most narratives of this time were told by a male’s perspective, which focuses on heroism and war like the story of Agamemnon. Cassandra shows a light through a female’s eyes which explains the more rational, humanism version of what is going on beyond the war. Since Overall, it can be said that one of Cassandra's main goals during the Trojan War was to expose all truths about her society concerning the motive for the war and society's treatment of women. Although this caused a lot of fear in her, she admires the equality between male and female power in Trojan society too much to not face the truth she knew. Cassandra saw war as mostly a patriarchal act, shifting the balance of power to men and societal norms away from the feminine virtues of community to the masculine ones of

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