The German World of Disappointment :: Essays Papers

The German World of DisappointmentFrom the youngest youngster to the oldest man, everyone has experienced the unpleasant feeling of disappointment. Everyone has been to a place that was not alone that they anticipated it to be. No one can say that someone has never somehow let them down. At one point or an new(prenominal), everyone has been spoil in something they have purchased. And what child is not heart-broken when he learns there is no Santa Claus? Whether it is in a person, thing, place, or idea, disappointment can be the roughly devastating and hurtful feeling people face. Disappointment is an experience that the German people, especially, have had to live through. The German writer, Heinrich Boll, uses his story Pale Anna to illustrate the planetary experience of disappointment, an experience his countrymen are very familiar with, through two literature and history.When a long-lost German soldier returns to his hometown five years aft(prenominal) World War II ha s ended, he returns to a place that is familiar, just now everyone he knows is gone. His new landlady constantly asks him if he knew her dead son. She talks constantly more or less her dearly departed sons life and shows him once more and again all the take ins of her son. The final picture that was taken of the landladys son was of him at his job as a tram conductor. All the other occasions that the soldier had seen it he reminisced about his own time worn-out(a) at that particular terminus. He remembers the pop stand, the trees, the villa with the golden lions, and especially a girl that he thought of often during the war that always boarded the streetcar at that terminus. The soldier never recognizes any of the people in the picture until he had been there for three weeks and then he sees the girl in the streetcar. The landlady tells him that the girl was her sons fiance and that she is living in the elbow room next to his. Pale Anna is what they always call her beca use of her extremely white face, entirely her face was unrecognizably destroyed when she was thrown through a windowpane by a bomb blast. The soldier returns to his room and tries unsuccessfully to conceive Annas face being anything else but beautiful, even with scars. He thinks about his past romances and remembers them as complete disappointments.