This section contains 7,723 words (approx. 26 pages at 300 words per page) |
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SOURCE: “Hauptmann: Bahnwärter Thiel,” in Narration in the German Novelle: Theory and Interpretation, Cambridge University Press, 1974, pp. 169-87.
In the following essay, Ellis probes narrative technique and patterns of imagery in Bahnwärter Thiel, linking these to the work's theme of “rigid control and its loss.”
With Hauptmann's Bahnwärter Thiel1 we return to a narrative in which the story-teller neither figures as a character in the story nor presents himself as an identifiable man telling it, but remains as the unidentified epic narrator. His story is, in outline, a fairly simple one, but his descriptions of the settings in which it takes place are often outlandish. The forest, for example, has a strange appearance: ‘ Die Stämme der Kiefern streckten sich wie bleiches, verwestes Gebein zwischen die Wipfel hinein, die wie grauschwarze Moderschichten auf ihnen lasteten‘ (62). The moon appears as a ‘ riesige purpurglühende Kugel’ (65), and...
This section contains 7,723 words (approx. 26 pages at 300 words per page) |
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