Bernstein Andrew COM L 108.01 November 25, 2007 Essay 5 Final The Unguaranteed Availability of Freedom
To what extent is Divided Heaven a product of East Germany propaganda, and what about the novel gives it such pro-Eastern feelings?
Divided Heaven, by Christa Wolf, is a novel that was published in 1963 in socialist East Germany. It was a state-supported example of Socialist Realism, which attempted to entertain readers by giving an unbiased, legitimate view of life in East Germany. It chronicles the journey of Rita as she makes her way from her small East Germany commune to the big city in the West for some factory experience. Along the way, Rita understands that the traditional values of the East far outweigh the more modern, less moral ways of western society. Wolf's Divided Heaven shows the reader that life in the West is too complex and that true happiness can only be found in the communist East Germany.
Divided Heaven begins with Rita and Manfred falling in love when Rita is nineteen. He showed her that she could accept love even when she never thought she could and when she thought it was hopeless to try. Rita "suddenly felt that all her nineteen years, all her wishes, actions, thoughts and dreams, had had only one purpose--to prepare
her for this moment, for this letter. She felt that she suddenly knew things which she had never learnt. She was certain that nobody before her had ever felt or could ever feel what she now felt" (Wolf 7). In preparation for her career as a teacher, Rita travels into the city where Manfred is from to gain factory experience. The communal work environment inside the factory was to give Rita valuable experience in order to help her with her future career. Manfred was not convinced that Rita would be able to handle such an experience, saying that "she'll soon find out what it's like and give up" (Wolf 19).
As the novel progresses, the reader learns why Rita ended up in a hospital in the beginning of the book. Manfred's predictions were proven correct and Rita had attempted to take her own life by not moving out of the way of an oncoming train. She no longer shrank from admitting to herself that the place and time she had collapsed had been no accident. She had seen the two heavy green coaches rolling towards her, inexorably, quietly, certainly. They're coming right at me, she had thought, and she knew quite well that she was bringing it upon herself. Instinctively, she allowed herself one last attempt to step out of their way...in despair. That was why she had wept when she awoke out of unconsciousness. She had wept because she had been saved (202). Rita, the epitome of traditional Eastern and socialist values, could not handle life in the West and the demands of factory life and thus attempted suicide. Wolf has portrayed the West so terribly that her character Rita stands in front of a train in symbolic protest of what the West does to good, kind people. Everything about the West is portrayed negatively, from the unhappy faces of her fellow factory employees, to the gray dcor of city life, to
the smells and textures of a foreign land so close to home. Rita likens the West to the "grey dreariness of life" (201).
Wolf's novel is littered with examples of her using specific diction to portray the East in a positive light and the West in a dark, negative light. People working in the factories are described as "pessimistic, bad-tempered and suspicious, and many seemed glad that the ship was sinking even though they were on it" (Wolf 52). Another example of biased writing on behalf of the author is on the previous page where Rita "compared the resigned, long-suffering expression on the men's faces with the newspaper photographs which still hung on the walls of the locker-room" (51). Over and over again throughout the novel, Wolf portrays the factory workers as miserable in her attempt at promoting the Eastern government's agenda.
Rita follows Manfred to the West when he leaves but then ultimately decides that life in the West doesn't suit her like it back does home. Rita's relationships with other characters such as Meternagel and Wendland add conflict and depth to an otherwise plain propagandist novel. The circumstances that Wolf was under tied her hands creatively. The policy of the GDR in the 60's was that of censoring all writers and compelling them to write within the genre of Socialist Realism. This style attempted to show the struggle of the proletariat in a positive light and depict the realities of life under Socialism. What Wolf's creative restrictions created was a rather bland novel with a predictable outcome. Constantly throughout the novel she utilizes negative language to refer to the West and western life, such as "she was surprised that anyone could have longed for this house or
fled to it, for it was an ordinary apartment house in a grey city street" (178). Wolf describes the journey to the west nauseously as terrible in every chance she gets, and Rita constantly complains about how it was a "terrible experience" (201). This very predictable and bland style truly makes for a boring read.
Wolf's creative restrictions under the Socialist Realist Doctrine left her work plain, ordinary, and predictable. Rita's adversity in the West coupled with her healing back home in the east is typical of the ostalgie theme of many Socialist Realist novels from the GDR. The novel's present tense of inside a sanatorium for most of the novel is yet another small hint of the author's that the West drives people to madness and that Eastern socialism is the key to happiness. She was not afraid that she would miss her share of kindliness. She knew that she would sometimes be tired, sometimes angry. But she was not afraid. And what made up for everything was the feeling that people could learn to sleep soundly again and live their lives to the full, as if there were an abundance of this strange substance--life--as if it could never be used up (212). This last paragraph of Divided Heaven is a blatantly obvious declaration that now that Rita is back home in East Germany, she will never again know unkindness. She will always have hope in her motherland. Contrast this with a dialogue between Rita and Manfred on the eve of their wedding: Why do you really think things will be better after the meeting than before? Will there suddenly be enough material? Will bad managers suddenly be good managers? Will the
men suddenly realize what it's all about, instead of just thinking of their own pockets? Maybe things won't change (61). Rita learns here from Manfred that the way of the Western factories is set in stone and capitalist greed overcomes all attempts at rehabilitation.
Rita's educational journey to the West and then back home is illustrative of the theme of many books written in the Soviet bloc, including in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). What makes Wolf's novel unappealing is her steadfast commitment to the ideals of Socialist Realism. Not once is the reader fooled into thinking that Rita could end up staying in the West with Manfred. Every description of East v. West utilized words that were soaked with meaning. Bright colors and sounds and feelings were associated with Rita's village, while darkness, unhappiness, and grey were associated with Manfred's east. On a summer holiday, the couple travel to "the countryside around Rita's village, bathed in the lake and filled their lungs with clear, pure summer air" (85). These images are solely reserved for descriptions of the East. In the end, Rita's love for Socialism outweighs her love of Manfred and she permanently returns without him. Above all else, it is Wolf's choice of descriptions of the environments of the two separate Germanys that create the air of propaganda with every turn of the page. Such a novel cannot be taken as an unbiased, thought-provoking account of life in two close countries that are so far different in their ideals. If one is looking for a book that is biased, uncreative, and full of propagandist descriptions throughout, then Christa Wolf has written Divided Heaven for him.