Discuss the image of the post-war family in realtion to parethood, Essay

Discuss the image of the post-war family in realtion to parethood, suffering and Vergangenheitsbewaltigung in timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders and Treichel's Der Verlorene - Essay Example The presentation of post-war society within the family domain in the two novels will be closely analysed in this essay, with regard to the family image, in order to ascertain what life was like and why family traits and painful emotions were present, as Weigel suggests above. Firstly, guilt and shame will be presented as a means of suffering within the family. Secondly, the effects of these emotions will provide a continuation into issues of parenthood and how ghosts from the past affect upbringing. Finally, Vergangenheitsbewà ¤ltigung will be examined in relation to language and generational gaps in order to determine how the past is dealt with in each novel in order to decipher how each author depicts the family image during this period and the traumatic effects this has had on offspring born after the war. Traumatic experience can be defined within the family setting through suffering. However, it is necessary to examine what it is to suffer and the consequences of it. This can be categorised by guilt, something that, according to Clarke, is â€Å"The feeling of having broken an internalised code of conduct or morality. To experience guilt is to feel pricked by conscience at this transgression, even if the individual is not called to accounts by others.†2 If suffering is symptomatic of guilt within the post-war image of the family, then let us now consider the meaning of shame. Undoubtedly, guilt is concerned with the inner-feelings of the individual while shame is how the individual believes himself to be considered by others. Lynd describes this notion as follows, This definition can be clarified further by alluding to Sartre, who points out that those who are guilty feel the force of a judgemental gaze by others, thus evoking emotions of shame with regard to their actions.4Therefore, the two emotions merge and emphasis is used accordingly, within the two novels, in order to nuance the