The Story Archive

Patterns of Childhood

Christa Wolf · 1976 CE · Novel · German · Contemporary

In the summer of 1971 a woman drives with her husband, brother and teenage daughter to a Polish town that was German when she was a child in it, and walks streets she can only half place. The girl she was under the Nazis is set down in the third person and called Nelly, the woman doing the remembering is addressed as you, and a third layer records the years of writing. A German reckoning with how an ordinary childhood accommodated the Reich.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalHistoricalPolitical
Theme
Memory & TimeGuilt & ConscienceIdentity & Self
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Innocent
Plot structure
Nonlinear / FracturedConfessionExile and Return
Symbol / motif
The HouseThe CityThe Journey
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
RealistModernist
Culture / tradition
German

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