The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Essay -- essays research papers

The Lost Honour of Katharina BlumKnowing about the source of a literary text can shape significantly the elan that it is read. Consider the effect of the writers context on your taste of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum.As a writer of manufacturing Bll was interpreting history, creating patterns of meaning, ordering his material to enable his ratifier to make aesthesis of it. The experiences of Bll and his values that arose from these events have been influential on the content and themes of Blls novel, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Bll experienced both the archetypal and second world wars and the effects that these wars had on German society. Events such as the economic collapse in Germany post WWII, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the rise of pupil based urban terrorism in due west Germany in the 1970s and the increasing state controls to contain such alleged threats can be seen to influence the issues explored in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. The novel i s a scuttlebutt on the force and the law, the labyrinth of social truth, the collision of fact and fiction and the power of language. Bll himself experienced the recommend first hand and this on with the experiences of Professor Bruckner, family the basis of his criticism directed at the sizable and hegemonic structures in society, in particular in relation to the police and the press and their corrupt relationship in the novella. Many of Heinrich Bll s views and attitudes, resulting form his context, are clearly visible in the novella through the line drawing of certain characters in positive or negative lights. The historical, social, economic and governmental context of Bll and West Germany at this time (1900s) had a vast effect on the issues Bll delves into in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and greatly affected my understanding of the novel. Germany has a deeply rooted history with fascism in the form of Nazism in WWII (1939-1945). Bll was a teenager at the time of H itlers rise to power and he despised Hitler and everything that he stood for. I hate the war and all those who love it. Bll actively refused to join Hitlers Youth as a boy, yet as a young man he was forced to join Hitlers army. After the war, until the German Republic was formed, Bll lived under the Allied Occupation. These events conduct Bll to view politics with doubt and skepticism and he became violent abo... ... context that shaped Heinrich Bll, it becomes apparent to the reader that these conditions have greatly shaped the themes and ideas discussed in Blls, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Main issues such as the corruption and collusion of powerful institutions in society, especially the police, press and industrialists have come through, with emphasis being placed on the misogynistic and gray society and the effects this has on the treatment of woman, shown by Katharina. Bll brings his cognisance of they way in which power and status are connected to riches into the text and greatly condemns the abuse of power by the dominant groups in society, Bll had little faith in any moral novelty coming from political or ecclesiastical hierarchies. . Bll believed that the function of literary works is to challenge the arrogant claims to totality made by all ideological systems . By incorporating his own context into his work, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Bll leads the reader to a greater understanding of this time period in West Germany, at the same time undermining the dominant systems and causing the reader to inquire and carefully examine power structures in society.