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From: Barbara Scotto <barbara_scotto>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:49:35 -0500
The excerpts from the war diaries in Postcards from No Man's Land seem important, not extraneous, to me. They are Jacob's introduction to the harsh reality of a soldier's experience in war - in essence, his grandfather's experience, a man he knows only from his grandmother's stories. Because of his reading of the diaries, he travels to Amsterdam with some background knowledge, though what he knows is still mostly a story and not truly real to him. When he goes to the ceremony, he gains some sense of the reality of the people buried in the cemetery and their very real connection to this place. When he later reads Geertrui's words describing her life with his grandfather, the details of her story mesh with and flesh out his growing knowledge of his grandfather's world.
His other knowledge of life in Amsterdam during the war comes from reading Anne Frank's diary. When he realizes that Anne doesn't belong just to him, that she has a life and a meaning for others completely separate from the life he has constructed for her in his head, his distress is a foreshadowing of the burden he feels when he learns of the secret life of his grandfather and Geertrui, a life which for many years has only existed in Geertrui's mind. Geertrui reveals the story first to Tessel and then to Jacob, and he has to decide whether to share the story and the man it reveals with his English grandmother or whether to keep the information and the revised picture of his grandfather - to himself.
Chambers writes compellingly of the way we construct our understanding of the world (and of ourselves) based on our experiences, our literary life and on the stories that form our history. He makes us question the relationship of the real world to the world that exists in our mind. In profound ways, he asks us to think about who we really are.
Barbara
Barbara Scotto Michael Driscoll School Brookline, Massachusetts
Received on Mon 31 Mar 2003 09:49:35 PM CST
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:49:35 -0500
The excerpts from the war diaries in Postcards from No Man's Land seem important, not extraneous, to me. They are Jacob's introduction to the harsh reality of a soldier's experience in war - in essence, his grandfather's experience, a man he knows only from his grandmother's stories. Because of his reading of the diaries, he travels to Amsterdam with some background knowledge, though what he knows is still mostly a story and not truly real to him. When he goes to the ceremony, he gains some sense of the reality of the people buried in the cemetery and their very real connection to this place. When he later reads Geertrui's words describing her life with his grandfather, the details of her story mesh with and flesh out his growing knowledge of his grandfather's world.
His other knowledge of life in Amsterdam during the war comes from reading Anne Frank's diary. When he realizes that Anne doesn't belong just to him, that she has a life and a meaning for others completely separate from the life he has constructed for her in his head, his distress is a foreshadowing of the burden he feels when he learns of the secret life of his grandfather and Geertrui, a life which for many years has only existed in Geertrui's mind. Geertrui reveals the story first to Tessel and then to Jacob, and he has to decide whether to share the story and the man it reveals with his English grandmother or whether to keep the information and the revised picture of his grandfather - to himself.
Chambers writes compellingly of the way we construct our understanding of the world (and of ourselves) based on our experiences, our literary life and on the stories that form our history. He makes us question the relationship of the real world to the world that exists in our mind. In profound ways, he asks us to think about who we really are.
Barbara
Barbara Scotto Michael Driscoll School Brookline, Massachusetts
Received on Mon 31 Mar 2003 09:49:35 PM CST
