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A review by zefrog
The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
challenging
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
When I first read about The Passenger, I was immediately interested and intrigued.
The book itself, presented in this revised form for the first time, has a checkered history. It is only now being published in German, and appeared under a pseudonym when released in English in 1939. And it is, at first sight, an important book, after all; an almost direct testimony from the days that followed the 1938 Kristallnacht, written in four short weeks, not long after those events.
However, having started reading the book, it took me about two weeks to finish what is a fairly short text that shouldn't have taken me more than three or four days to polish off. For some reason, having stopped reading, I was finding it difficult to pick the thing up again, and carry on with my reading.
More confusingly, I can't decide if this is due to my general state of mind, irrespective of the book itself, if it is because of a flaw that I disliked and repulsed me from the book, or if it is, in fact, due to Boschwitz's genius; a natural reaction, planned and expected by the author, to the narrative he presents to his readers.
To begin with, Otto Silbermann, the protagonist, the passenger, is not a likeable or inspiring character. The story is told via a mixture of his inner monologue and circumstantial elements coming from an omniscient narrator.
Faced with exceptional, and undoubtedly difficult, circumstances, we find a man who is judgemental, foolish, irresolute, and indecisive, even though he is also supposed to be a captain of industry, a successful merchant, who, one would expect, would have to be the exact opposite of these things to become who he has become. As the plot enfolds, his paranoia grows, his behaviour becomes more erratic.
Silbermann's lack of decision is reflected in the structure of the story which mostly relates a series of train journeys crisscrossing Germany, to the point that he seems to become a version of the Wandering Jew, cursed to wander the earth aimlessly, and no longer in control of his own destiny:
"I can sense how closely death is nipping at my heels. It's just a matter of being faster. If I stop I'll go under, I'll sink into the mire. I simple have to run, run, run. When I think about it I've been running all my life. But then why is it so difficult all of a sudden, now that it's more necessary than before? Greater danger ought to bring greater strength, but instead it's paralysing, if the first attempts to save yourself fall through." (p146)
For him, each frantic trip across Germany becomes a further stage in the deconstruction of his inner self, just as his individuality has already been robbed from him by the state and his fellow citizens; his only flimsy safeguard being his not looking like a jew.
"And even if things do calm down outside, will I ever be able to recover the calm I had on the inside? Everything has changed, after all. That inner security is now gone, and my life is nothing but a series of accidents - I'm completely at the mercy of chance. It's almost as though the subject has become the object." (p197)
Yet, despite being mostly about travelling and about being in a state of flight, the narrative lacks momentum. It, like its non-hero, is getting nowhere. This is one the many perplexing contradictions of a book, which is more a report than a piece of fiction, suffused with the frantic urgency of writing to exorcise the author's demons and fears.
But what could easily have become a legitimate but simplistic denunciation of the treatment inflicted on German Jews by the Nazi state and a complicit and approving populace is in fact much more nuanced than that. Through his travels, our deeply flawed protagonist meets a wide cross-section of the German Volk with all their variations of attitudes and ambiguities of motivations.
In effect, beyond the notorious "banality of evil", this is a text plunging its readers in the mundanity of horror. And this is perhaps why I was for ever finding it so difficult to get back to. At least, as a reader, I had a chance to escape this hell in earth. For its lack of action, it is a deeply uncomfortable read; pessimistic and defeatist. As hindsight tells us, however, it is all too justifiably so.
The book itself, presented in this revised form for the first time, has a checkered history. It is only now being published in German, and appeared under a pseudonym when released in English in 1939. And it is, at first sight, an important book, after all; an almost direct testimony from the days that followed the 1938 Kristallnacht, written in four short weeks, not long after those events.
However, having started reading the book, it took me about two weeks to finish what is a fairly short text that shouldn't have taken me more than three or four days to polish off. For some reason, having stopped reading, I was finding it difficult to pick the thing up again, and carry on with my reading.
More confusingly, I can't decide if this is due to my general state of mind, irrespective of the book itself, if it is because of a flaw that I disliked and repulsed me from the book, or if it is, in fact, due to Boschwitz's genius; a natural reaction, planned and expected by the author, to the narrative he presents to his readers.
To begin with, Otto Silbermann, the protagonist, the passenger, is not a likeable or inspiring character. The story is told via a mixture of his inner monologue and circumstantial elements coming from an omniscient narrator.
Faced with exceptional, and undoubtedly difficult, circumstances, we find a man who is judgemental, foolish, irresolute, and indecisive, even though he is also supposed to be a captain of industry, a successful merchant, who, one would expect, would have to be the exact opposite of these things to become who he has become. As the plot enfolds, his paranoia grows, his behaviour becomes more erratic.
Silbermann's lack of decision is reflected in the structure of the story which mostly relates a series of train journeys crisscrossing Germany, to the point that he seems to become a version of the Wandering Jew, cursed to wander the earth aimlessly, and no longer in control of his own destiny:
"I can sense how closely death is nipping at my heels. It's just a matter of being faster. If I stop I'll go under, I'll sink into the mire. I simple have to run, run, run. When I think about it I've been running all my life. But then why is it so difficult all of a sudden, now that it's more necessary than before? Greater danger ought to bring greater strength, but instead it's paralysing, if the first attempts to save yourself fall through." (p146)
For him, each frantic trip across Germany becomes a further stage in the deconstruction of his inner self, just as his individuality has already been robbed from him by the state and his fellow citizens; his only flimsy safeguard being his not looking like a jew.
"And even if things do calm down outside, will I ever be able to recover the calm I had on the inside? Everything has changed, after all. That inner security is now gone, and my life is nothing but a series of accidents - I'm completely at the mercy of chance. It's almost as though the subject has become the object." (p197)
Yet, despite being mostly about travelling and about being in a state of flight, the narrative lacks momentum. It, like its non-hero, is getting nowhere. This is one the many perplexing contradictions of a book, which is more a report than a piece of fiction, suffused with the frantic urgency of writing to exorcise the author's demons and fears.
But what could easily have become a legitimate but simplistic denunciation of the treatment inflicted on German Jews by the Nazi state and a complicit and approving populace is in fact much more nuanced than that. Through his travels, our deeply flawed protagonist meets a wide cross-section of the German Volk with all their variations of attitudes and ambiguities of motivations.
In effect, beyond the notorious "banality of evil", this is a text plunging its readers in the mundanity of horror. And this is perhaps why I was for ever finding it so difficult to get back to. At least, as a reader, I had a chance to escape this hell in earth. For its lack of action, it is a deeply uncomfortable read; pessimistic and defeatist. As hindsight tells us, however, it is all too justifiably so.