The German World of Disappointment :: Essays Papers

The German World of DisappointmentFrom the youngest sm on the whole fry to the oldest man, everyone has experienced the unpleasant feeling of disappointment. Everyone has been to a place that was not all that they anticipated it to be. No one can say that someone has never somehow let them down. At one point or an early(a), everyone has been foil in something they have purchased. And what child is not heart-broken when he learns there is no Santa Claus? Whether it is in a per word of honor, thing, place, or idea, disappointment can be the intimately 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 general experience of disappointment, an experience his countrymen are very familiar with, through twain literature and history.When a long-lost German soldier returns to his hometown five years by and by World Wa r II has ended, he returns to a place that is familiar, and everyone he knows is gone. His new landlady constantly asks him if he knew her dead son. She talks forever somewhat her dearly departed sons life and shows him once more and again all the estimates of her son. The final picture that was taken of the landladys son was of him at his job as a tram conductor. All the other occasions that the soldier had seen it he reminisced about his own time worn out(p) at that particular terminus. He remembers the pop stand, the trees, the villa with the golden lions, and especially a girl that he thought of often during the war that always 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 direction next to his. Pale Anna is what they always call her because o f her extremely white face, save 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 figure Annas face being anything else but beautiful, even with scars. He thinks about his past romances and remembers them as complete disappointments.