A Metahistorical review of Britain’s and Germany’s role in World War II through a re-reading of McEwan’s Atonement and Schlink’s the Reader

Atonement and the Reader in a dialogue:

A Metahistorical review of Britain’s and Germany’s role in World War II through a re-reading of McEwan’s Atonement and Schlink’s the Reader

Abstract

    World War II is one of the key events in the first half of 20^th century, the impact of which was of so great a consequence that it still becomes a site of strife for imaginative productions to reflect their anxieties. Atonement and the Reader are the samples of such productions with the focalization of authorship in the former and readership in the latter, covering a span of almost 50 years. Therefore, three factors become of importance in connecting these novels together: 1. Authorship 2. Readership 3. History, namely World War II. The present study aims at inspecting the bifocal functioning of authorship and readership within a slice of history, World War II, through the eyes of the mentioned novels in order to achieve a different perspective of the event and the consequences that befell its aftermath.

Introduction

            Ian Colvin (1965) quotes, from Sir Vansittart’s notes, a biting blame on Hitler’s regime on May 1933: “The present regime in Germany will, on past and present form, loose off another European war just so soon as it feels strong enough” (345) This was more of a prediction at the time but inspection over the sharp hostility of a British diplomat towards Germany reveals the origins, perhaps, of Britain’s competitive record with Germany. S. L. Mayer (1985), in the introduction to Atlas of World War II, clearly asserts the link between the two world wars: World War II being the tail of World War I, so Mayer claims that sparks of war were nothing but the sense of competition; Britain spotted Germany as a rival. World War I stopped German rapid progression but in less than 30 years, about 22 years, Germany grew to be an inconceivable power once more, hence World War II: “By 1938 German power in Europe was greater than ever before, and Britain had to face the old question once again. Could she condone German political dominance of the Continent?” (i) Provided that the motives behind the ignition of World War II was over the extension of empires, the heavy reproach that Germany bore is shared with Britain. The results of war, however, were not compatible with its initiating motives: Britain, not managing to save her previous outstanding position, was disillusioned: “Britain eventually recognized that its future lay in the European Economic Community (EEC) rather than the empire” (Donnelly,107), and Germany, reviewing the past with a new insight, was torn between new emerging powers: West and East Germany, former representing a federal state and the latter a communist one. So the war was a futile incident to take place since it did not fulfill the ideals it was started for but Mayer believes that the study of World War II is good for one reason at least and that is: “[to]avoid such conflicts at all costs” (ibid).

            Atonement, a British novel on authorship, and The Reader, a German novel about readership, embody the events of World War II as a texture for their emplotment, but they have a new realization of writing, reading and the text, which in turn would change attitudes toward the role of Britain and Germany in the context of Second World War. Atonement reflects the initial motives and the commercial vantage of Britain in the war within its story and the shattered image of power in its title “Atonement”. Oddly enough these reflections are hand in hand with the focalization of authorship and the mental breakdown of the writer in the end. The Reader, on the other hand, illustrates the West Germany and the post war generation reading the incidents, trying to make head and tails of war and the upcoming consequences. These two novels try to articulate tacit aspects of World War II, and in this respect they become as stated in Dirlik’s article(2002) ‘Whither History’: “History from the bottom…stories and histories that had been suppressed in earlier historiography, but now came forth to make their own claim upon the past”(4).Apart from the historical aspect, the two novels seem to have other factors to communicate with each other regarding the issues of writing and reading: Pre-war generation, in each country, authored the schemes of initiating the war leading to the annihilation; however, they passed the more significant role of reading and reconstruction to the postwar generation: “I know there’s always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened?”(McEwan,371).

            The present article aims at studying the two novels, Atonement and the Reader as examples of newer narrations of World War II, through the analysis of which we may also observe how these two novels demand a re-inspection in Britain’s and Germany’s charges of initiating the war, their predicaments after the war, and a different picture of World War II, regarding the role of the two countries.

Atonement           

             Atonement is based on the talent of the youngest among Tallis family: Briony. She has written a play to celebrate the return of the older brother, Leon, but her jealousy for the love between her sister, Cecilia, and the young servant’s son, Robbie, on whom Briony has a crush ,pulls her to  testify to a false event, which separates the lovers, sending Robbie to the war and Cecilia to nursery in the hospitals; as an atonement she starts writing novels to unite them in fiction, but the fulfillment of this wish is synchronous to her own death. Briony’s death at the summit of her accomplishment is the very reminder of Barthe’s (1977) “Death of the Author”, but before going through that we should examine the grounds on which we lay the claim of this relationship.

            Julie Ellam(2009) in a reader’s guide on Atonement quotes MacFarlane ‘s idea on the issue of authorship in the novel:

 McEwan focuses on the way in which we create the future by making it fit templates of the past; how the forms into which the imagination is shaped by fiction are applied to life. It is in this way, he suggests, that literature can make things happen, and not always for the good.

            Authorship as stated by Macfarlane is more than an imaginative creation; it affects life to the extent that formation of fiction is paralleled with formation of life: “…literature can make things happen”. MacFarlane’s assertion ,on McEwan’s attempt to unveil the power of literature over the occurrence of the events ,is the point where structuralist criticism enters: “…structuralist criticism conceives literature to be the second-order signifying system that uses the first order structural system of language as its medium”(Abrams,309-10).Structuralism perceives language as the first authoritative system of formation, literature is only the second; however, the interrelationship between language and literature pulls Ellam to testify: “McEwan’s use of structuralist and poststructuralist thinking is an influence on the narrative to make this a twenty-first-century country house novel rather than a rewrite of a work by Jane Austen”(36). Ellam’s reference to the poststructuralist aspect of McEwan’s work is illustrated in Briony’s death at the peak of her achievement: the death of the author.

            “The Death of the Author” was published in 1968 synchronous with the radical political movement in France but contrary to this synchrony, it is deeply rooted in Barthes’ own  text published in 1957, Mythologies[i], where Barthes sets forth a new “semiology” ,in which sign has no seat. Sign with its involvement in a “system of meaning”, tending to create unified identities, is an origin for structures such as Self, Author, Truth etc as the centers of Western culture, and should be assaulted for the rise of newer destinations: “a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination”( Barthes: 1977,148), from now on the text sits on its head. Atonement can be seen as a neat embodiment of these theories in fiction. Briony’s starting point of authorship is her scheming against Robbie, but the consequences are beyond her imagination: she separates true lovers. As an atonement she writes and re-writes the same story until she manages to write the ideal version for the sake of the reader, which is not necessarily the truth: “…what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from that?.”(McEwan,371), and costs her death in the end: “ Im dying. My doctor tells me I have something called vascular dementia…. brain gradually closes down, you lose your words, you lose your memory…” (Joe Wright,2007). Atonement’s main pre-occupation is with authorship but it cannot overlook the readers; in fact, Briony’s death reminds us of: “ … the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”.

             Now Atonement as a poetic narration of World War II may be appealing regarding the spotting out the mode of emplotment, which is an arbitrary exclusion and inclusion of events “in the interest of constituting a story of a particular kind” (White: 1985, intro 6). From a metahistorical vantage point Atonement perceives World War II as inevitable but narrates the incidents in an ironical tone and therefore the mode of emplotment becomes a Satirical Tragedy.

            S.L. Mayer (1985) puts forward the ineluctability of the tragic advent of the Second World War: “World War II in Europe was very like a Greek tragedy, wherein the elements of disaster are present before the play begins, and the tragedy is writ all the larger because of the disaster's inevitability” (i). To this end Atonement supports the narration of World War II, but it doesn’t sustain the romantic tone of emplotment, the triumph of virtue over vice. In fact, irony prevails in the novel so much that it over shadows the presence of tragedy. An example of this feature is Paul Marshall, a friend of Leon, who is known to everyone by his business: a chocolate millionaire. Marshall is not educated, not even intelligent, he just has a very sharp sense of how to find money and at the time money was in war:

…. there loomed the greater challenge yet of Army Amo, the khaki bar with the Pass the Amo! slogan; the concept rested on an assumption that spending on the Armed Forces must go on increasing if Mr. Hitler didn’t pipe down; there was even a chance that the bar could become part of the standard-issue ration pack; in that case, if there were to be a general conscription, a further five factories would be needed…..one member was even accusing Marshall of being a warmonger…..

Marshall’s use of the title “Mr.” for Hitler, who is utterly despised and feared in Britain, is another ironical factor in the general satirical tone of the novel. Hitler’s ambition to establish the war is most beneficial to people like Marshall, so he calls him ‘Mr.’ for Hitler takes the blame and the benefit is passed to Marshall. The word “accusing” has an ironical influence, as well, for Marshall is a ‘warmonger’. There’s another scene where Marshall meets Lola, Jackson and Pierrot, the cousins from the north:

Marshall: ‘Sugar casing see? Milk chocolate inside. Good for any conditions, even if it melts…… There’ll be one of these inside the kitbag of every soldier in the land. Standard issue.

Jackson: ‘Anyway, why should they all get free sweets and not the children?’

Marshall: ‘Because they’ll be fighting for their country’

Jackson: ‘Our dad says there isn’t going to be a war’

Marshall: ‘well, he is wrong’

Marshall is utterly confidence of his provision for the future and speaks so decidedly about the advent of war as if he has a hand in the whole event. In fact, he had for later on when the war had begun, Briony watched him and Lola welcoming Queen Elizabeth on a tour of the Army Amo factory with the slogan: “Keep the Amo coming! Our boys have a sweet tooth!” and who are these boys? Among them Robbie is seen and Cecilia in the hospital.

            The late self-realization of a central character, Briony, which supports the tragic aspect of the novel, becomes, ironically, an upper hand to Paul Marshall, sustaining the satirical tone. On the night of Leon’s arrival to the house, Briony happens to read an intimate letter from Robbie to Cecilia. Witnessing a scene of their love making in the library, Briony rushes to judge Robbie as a “sex maniac”. At the same night the twins, guest at the Tallis’, Jackson and Pierrot, gone missing with a letter saying they can’t stay there anymore. During the search for the twins, Lola is sexually abused in the dark. Robbie is absent, so Briony’s testimony, that she saw him abusing Lola, plus the letter he had previously sent to Cecilia, seems enough to find Robbie guilty. Briony comes to realize her culpable deed when it’s too late: “There was our crime-Lola’s, Marshall’s, mine- and from the second version onwards, I set out to describe it”. This was said by Briony in an interview done years later after the incident, serving no purpose to save anyone, yet Marshall had made most of it, not as a tricky opportunist but a silly millionaire only, at the right time, because Briony did all on his behalf.

            Atonement’s review of World War II involves pervasive study of social and economic factors, which overshadows the political ones. Atonement is aware of a family like Tallis and their guests: the cousins, Marshall and Robbie. Briony is the production of the bourgeois ethics of the Tallis: idealistic adolescent, ready to sacrifice moral codes of manner in service of her ambitions. As an answer to Leon’s question: “Have you broken the rules?” Briony, having witnessed Robbie and Cecilia’s lovemaking in the library, answers: “I’ve done nothing wrong today” (McEwan,129), implying that wrong doers are the lovers. She does recognize the peculiarity of her sister’s relationship with Robbie and finds it immoral, but it takes her five years to understand that her lie, about Robbie abusing Lola (ibid,174), is a bigger sin with more violent consequences. On the same line, the cousins come from a rising bourgeois middle class, mother has run away with someone and the father has brought the children to some, apparently, safe place, but Lola falls to prey by Marshall’s special social position; no one suspected that he might be guilty. Robbie, on the other hand, is the victim of his social class; the naïve conclusion that Robbie was the abuser, apart from Briony’s testimony, came from his social position, he was but a servant’s son, more likely to have abused Lola than a chocolate millionaire! Oddly enough, all these incidents sent Robbie to war! which can also mean that he was sent to war as a result of Broiny and Marshall’s deed. Ellam confirms the social conflict represented in the novel: “The descriptions of this…. [ hide-bound class system of English society] implicitly criticize the self-enclosed bourgeois that fails to see the guilt of the privileged and wealthy as represented by Paul Marshall”(ibid,39). Paul Marshall’s character play the role of the economical factor as well; it was previously discussed how eager Marshall was about the commencement of war and about the advantages he might take and therefore further explanation seems redundant. Thus far, observation of the incidents in Atonement sets forth the socio-economic factors in a political texture, i.e. World War II, to illustrate the significant role they play in the upheaval of events.

            The mode of emplotment, satirical tragedy in Atonement is consistent with the overall tone of the novel which is ironical[ii]. Irony remains “metatropological” and “transidoelogical”, according to White, because Irony is paradoxical (1980: intro). So elucidation on the ironical approach of the novel would clarify the ideological implication as well.

            Authorship, as the contextualized crucial issue in Atonement, is deemed as an ironical action: “…writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin.” (Barthes: 1977, 145). The irony lies in the contradiction of purposes: the real point of beginning is not the play she writes for Leon but the scheme she authors against Robbie: “Briony’s creation of tension comes when she accuses Robbie of the crime he did not commit….

 Briony is seen to perform the role of God, she has aspired to, and this is a reminder of both the control of the author and the process of writing” (Ellam: 2009, 37). At the end of the novel, Briony admits that she has manipulated the truth of the story for the sake of the reader and so the power of the author is emphasized:

   …how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she also God? In her imagination, she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists….

In light of White’s explanation on Irony, it may be revealed why Briony is ironical here : “the aim of the Ironic statement is to affirm tacitly the negative of what is on the literal level affirmed positively, or the reverse” ( intro, 37).This is the peak of Irony in the novel, since Briony has written the whole thing as an atonement. She never found the chance to make an apology to Cecilia or Robbie, so she wrote the novel to unite them in fiction. Some lines later she says : “ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness….to let my lovers live and unite them in fiction”. She deprived them of real happiness, so her weakness over retrieving them to life pulls her to write fiction her entire life. It explains why Irony is “metatropological”, since it presents something and tacitly means something else. It also clarifies why Irony is “trans -ideological”, since it may seem as an adherent of the side to which it is, consciously and tacitly, adversative.

            With an overall ironical approach, Atonement is less likely to have an ideological implication. Of course, the approach it depicts to World War II and the narration of events may seem radical but then irony is there to nullify their effects. Then again ironical view of authorship and narration would neutralize the previous nullifications and the narrative is charged with ideas. Atonement, therefore, staggers between different sorts orientations, but doesn’t take the last step to lend itself to one of them totally, enjoying ironical implications.

 The Reader

            The Reader is concerned with the post-war Germany and the readings of the new German generation of the events of World War II. A young boy of fifteen, Michael Berg, falls for a woman of thirty-six, Hanna Schmitz, who used to be a Nazi guard during the war and now serves as tram conductor. Reading books to his beloved, Michael deepens relationship with Hanna only to find her gone suddenly. The next visit with Hanna is when Michael is a young student of law attending War Crimes trial courts, where he learns of Hanna’s secret: that she is illiterate. Hanna is sentenced to prison for life, where she learns to read and write eventually and Michael keeps reading, through cassette tapes, to her for the rest of his life.

            The structure of the Reader consists of different levels containing different layers each. On the one level the act of reading and its significance from Barthes’ point of view is brought up, the next layer of the same level is the connection of Barthes’ idea with sublimity. On a different level the act of reading from a metahistorical stand point is propounded, according to which the relationship between pre-war and post-war generations in Germany is structured.

            Previously the significant role of the reader was mentioned and the author was de-centered on account of Barthes, so the name of the novel gives enough grounds for it to be analyzed through Barthes’ eyes, not to mention that Barthes extends on the act of reading, which encompasses the case of the Reader and will be made note of. The Reader, however, is not totally heedless of authorship and, even though de-centered, it’s been made a room for, because: “…we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” ( Barthes:1971, 148).So the shift of emphasis to the role of the reader is not in favor of total evasion of the process of authorship, rather a reinforcing act, so the reader and reading is given impetus while a hindsight view of the authorship is still at hand.

        In “The Pleasure of the Text” Barthes (1975) sets forth the notion of “jouissance” as a result of reading a special kind of text which: “…imposes a loss, the text that discomforts…” (14). Barthes never fully clarifies the jouissance but Richard Miller has translated it as “ bliss”[iii], Literary Glossary of M.H Abrams suggested “ orgasmic ecstasy” and Jonathan Culler(1975) described it as: “a rapture of dislocation produced by ruptures or violations of intelligibility”(192).. The relationship between Michael and Hanna can be taken as a neat metaphor containing Barthian elements of pleasure, specifically jouissance. From a certain point onward, reading becomes a ritual in their affair and a priority in the order of things they want to do: “But the next day when I arrived and wanted to kiss her, she pulled back. ‘First you have to read’”(Schlink: 1995,42). The reading has to be put paralleled with what comes next: lovemaking and the orgasmic ecstasy. Michael can make love to Hanna only if he reads to her; it makes up for her loss: her illiteracy, however, there are occasions that the very same loss causes discomfort. Once, on a trip with Hanna, Michael leaves a note: “Good morning! Bringing breakfast be right back” (ibid) but it creates a big fight because Hanna is unable to read and therefore she misunderstands Michael’s absence: “How could you go just like that?” (ibid) The fight ends in another occasion of lovemaking as well. Culler makes sense here, since the “rupture” happens as a result of incidents challenging Hanna’s and Michael understanding: Hanna cannot understand why he has left, Michael cannot grasp her anger.

            In a wider scope jouissance links the events of the novel with the idea of sublimity, and this would explain incidents of Hanna’s trial scene. Jouissance is caused by a lack, which is inherent in sublimity. Generally speaking: “…. the sublime marks the limits of reason and expression together with a sense of what might lie beyond these limits”( Shaw,2).More specifically: “…the sublime does indeed verge on the ridiculous;…. the desire to outstrip earthly bonds leads instead to the encounter with lack, an encounter that is painful, cruel, and some would say comic” ( ibid).In both cases, the main cause of sublime is a lack or limitation, which is a shared feature in jouissance: “imposes a loss”(Barthes,14) and therefore, it is a sublime state. Now, the jouissance shared by Hanna and Michael in the first part of the novel is capsule of a complicated sublimity which is enhanced in the second part of the novel.

            The second part of the Reader involves the trial of the Nazi agents, Hanna included. The process of inquisition focuses on Nazi guards committing Holocaust crimes. The enhancing sublimity of jouissance is seen is Hanna’s answers to the court:

            Judge: None of you held back, you all acted together?

            Hanna: Yes

            -Did you not know that you were sending the prisoners to their death?

            - Yes, but the new ones came, and the old ones had to make room for the new ones.

            - So because you wanted to make room, you said you and you and you have to be sent

            back to be killed?

            Hana didn’t understand what the presiding judge was getting at:

-       I…. I mean…so what would you have done?

Hanna seems ridiculous for emphasizing a responsibility which is already condemned and so it looks as if she “didn’t understand”. Her honesty, straightforwardness seems incongruous to atmosphere of the court, and works against her. The condition Hanna experiences during her trial can also be seen as a capsule of Fascism’s failure. As stated by Zizek, Fascism’s antagonistic behavior towards the Jews illustrates an “inherent lack” (Shaw,138): “…the hideous sublimity of the Jews signifies the inability of Fascism to be anything other than a fractured or empty totality” (ibid,140). However, the question asked by the judge seems as ridiculous as the answers delivered by Hanna: “So because you wanted to make room, you said you and you and you have to be sent back to be killed?” The very same logic to exhibit the Jews’ sublime position, presents Hanna as the sublime object, since the court has no access to higher ranks and Hanna is there to be the embodiment of this lack.

            Hanna’s final verdict for a report she was basically unable to write and her dignity not to admit to her illiteracy forms a dramatic irony, to highlight the sublime emphasis of Hanna’s role as an agent. In the court Hanna is questioned about the report written about the death of the Jews kept in the camp, in fire. She responds that it was done by all the other guards:

            -So you’re saying you talked it through together. Who wrote it?

            “You!” The other defendants pointed at Hanna.

            -No, I didn’t write it. Does it matter who did?

            A prosecutor suggested that an expert be called to compare the handwriting in the report

            and the handwriting of the defendant Schmitz.

            -My handwriting? You want my hand writing... You don’t have to call an expert. I admit I wrote the report.

Zizek’s interpretation of Hegelian sublime is based on the failure of “empirical to present the transcendental” leading to a “radical negativity” experienced by the object. Hanna’s presence in the court is the materialization of nothing to be judged and this exposes her sublime position. Although there is the report to testify to her authorship in the event, the dramatic irony of her illiteracy, the knowledge shared by Michael and the readers, leaves no room for her judgment as an author, she was just an agent. Even though her agency in the crime should not be overlooked, to punish her as an author is far from doing justice.

            The Reader has yet some more consents with Barthes’ theory on reading. Barthes proposed re-reading in order to escape the “ideological habit” of reading the text and putting it aside or as he puts “consuming” the text(S/Z,15-16). The Reader seems, unconsciously or consciously, to ask a re-reading of the past in the light of Barthes assertion by refusing to view the past the same as before again and again “…television series Holocaust and movies like Sophie’s Choice and especially Schindler’s List…. Allied photographs and testimony of survivors flashed on the mind again and again, until they froze into clichés” (148); it doesn’t mean that the novel tries to deny or forget, but to differ. Elsewhere Michael starts re-reading: “I reread Odyssey…. Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again…What else is the history of law?” (181-182). Here the the Reader, too, suggest a rereading, in line with Barthes, to avoid the trap of ideological habit, hence reaching at different results.

            The Reader shares with Atonement some elements and factors; however, that the same elements result in different outcomes put the novels in different positions. The other distinction between The Reader and Atonement is that the former seems more conscious of its historical role as a narrative: “We didn’t feel like mere spectators, or listeners, or recorders. Watching, listening and recording were our contribution to the exploration of history” (94).

            The Reader contains conflict and reconciliation which reinforces the presence of tragedy according to White. The novel approach its end with Hanna’s will, after her suicide: “There’s still money in the lavender tea tin. Give it to Michael Berg; he should send ….to the daughter who survived the fire in church with her mother” (207). Upon the girl’s refusal of the money, Michael gave it to the “Jewish League Against Illiteracy” and went to Hanna’s grave. Hanna’s reconciliation with the Jews works as a factor sustaining tragedy in the novel, but satirical elements can’t be neglected. The whole process of judgment is strictly ironical adding to the satirical tone of the novel, e.g. judge’s claim on Hanna’s deed, sending the Jews to be killed to make room for the new comers, is supposed to scorn Hanna whereas it mocks the judge. To demand humanity of a person who is not in a position to decide the moral of her/his job seems implausible. Ironically enough, the same court and the same judge do not hesitate to sentence Hanna to prison for life when they are not sure of her total responsibility over the committed crime. So, although it seems as if the heart of the novel is conflict and reconciliation, these ironies undo the tragic effect and fill in the created gap with a satirical one. As a result, The Reader, like Atonement, becomes a satirical tragedy.

             Michael’s affair with Hanna, the court and trial, Hanna’s verdict and her death are all part of wider scene, which is Germany in the aftermath of World War II. These incidents are considered as “threads”, as White states, in the wide context of war, by which convergence or divergence, occurrence of a significant incident is determined. The Reader seems well-aware of the tie between Michael’s life and the wider context of the whole nation: “…the pain I went through because of my love for Hanna was, in a way, the fate of my generation, a German fate…” (171). This is the least proof of the first part of the novel to encapsulate more than just a love affair. Reading, as a mode of communication between Hanna and Michael, is the inserted concept in the context of post-war Germany, in order to bear a heavy load of implication, to make the Reader an epitome of specific part of history.

Conclusion    

            The establishment of a dialogue between the two novels is based on the contextualized issues in each of them, i.e. readership in The Reader, and authorship in Atonement. At this stage the overall view of the study lays open the fact that The Reader was a poking force in revision of the history of World War II and Atonement, not being able to find a reasonable answer to these pokes, atones for the ambitious drives toward which Britain had moved once. It looks like these novels are meant to be the energy to jolt the history of World War II, and the establishment of a dialogue between them would tip the balance, that has prevailed for decades in favor of the allies.

Bibliography

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