The German World of Disappointment :: Essays Papers

The German World of DisappointmentFrom the youngest child to the oldest man, e trulyone has experienced the unpleasant tonicity of disappointment. Everyone has been to a place that was not all that they evaluate it to be. No one can say that someone has never somehow let them down. At one point or an opposite, everyone has been disappointed in something they contribute purchased. And what child is not heart-broken when he learns in that respect is no Santa Claus? Whether it is in a person, thing, place, or idea, disappointment can be the most 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 universal experience of disappointment, an experience his countrymen are very familiar with, through both literature and history.When a long-lost German spend returns to his hometown five years after World War II has ende d, he returns to a place that is familiar, but everyone he knows is gone. His new landlady constantly asks him if he knew her dead son. She talks endlessly about her dearly departed sons feel and shows him again and again all the pictures of her son. The final picture that was taken of the landladys son was of him at his job as a streetcar conductor. All the other occasions that the soldier had seen it he reminisced about his own time spent at that particular terminus. He remembers the pop stand, the trees, the villa with the golden lions, and especially a fille that he thought of often during the war that forever and a day 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 room next to his. Pale Anna is what they always call her because of her extremely w hite face, but her face was unrecognizably destroyed when she was thrown through a window by a bomb blast. The soldier returns to his room and tries unsuccessfully to imagine Annas face being anything else but beautiful, even with scars. He thinks about his past romances and remembers them as complete disappointments.