Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, Korb examines the narrator's understanding of the different sides of war.

Wolf's "Exchanging Glances" tells of a German woman's recollection, from a distance of 25 years, of the end of World War II, as her country stood on the brink of its final defeat. A teenager at the time, the narrator has grown up under the teachings of the Führer and the Reich with her childhood lost to war. She has been indoctrinated with false ideals through textbooks and newspapers, to the point of accepting hatred and extermination as "household words." Now, at the edge of adulthood, she can hardly fathom the future because the world seems to offer no possibilities that are "desirable, or even bearable."

The narrator's perceptions and...