This paper analyzes an alternative novel "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. The author presents an alternative history in which Germany, under the leadership of the leader Adolf Hitler, do not lose the World War II, but are in a state of "cold" war with the Allies. After the extermination of Jews and Slavs and the normalization of political relations within the country, Adolf Hitler aims to make a historic agreement with the President of the United States.
Harris presents a vision of what might have happened if the Allies would not defeat the Third Reich. He points the way alternative history about the outcome of World War II and explores the design of the past. The considered events and alternative aspect help to understand past events, their causes and effects.
In the alternate history, the historical process compared to the branching roads reveals, in which moments of these paths diverge, in what direction and to which decisions they lead. The main vocation of alternative history is a historiosophical reflection. The simulation of the potential paths of historical development helps to understand the mechanisms of history and brings to light the causes and circumstances of the actual events and historical phenomena.
Introduction
1. History as a common subject in literature
1.1 The presence of history in literature
1.2 Different types of history
1.3 Alternative history and example works
2.The vision of post-war world in “Fatherland”
2.1.The alternative background of the novel
2.2The picture of post-war German Reich
3. Analysis of the novel
3.1 An alternative story in the novel “Fatherland”
3.2 The assessment of the novel
Conclusion
References
Introduction
In this paper I analyze an alternative novel "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. The author presents an alternative history in which Germany, under the leadership of the leader Adolf Hitler, do not lose the World War II, but are in a state of "cold" war with the Allies. After the extermination of Jews and Slavs and the normalization of political relations within the country, Adolf Hitler aims to make a historic agreement with the President of the United States. Harris presents a vision of what might have happened if the Allies would not defeat the Third Reich. He points the way alternative history about the outcome of World War II and explores the design of the past. The considered events and alternative aspect help to understand past events, their causes and effects. In the alternate history, the historical process compared to the branching roads reveals, in which moments of these paths diverge, in what direction and to which decisions they lead. The main vocation of alternative history is a historiosophical reflection. The simulation of the potential paths of historical development helps to understand the mechanisms of history and brings to light the causes and circumstances of the actual events and historical phenomena.
In the first chapter, I am pointing to the popularity of alternative history in literature. I describe its features in literature, citing the examples, pointing out how throughout story, history inspired the creators of literary works. I describe the way historical facts contributed to the creation of alternative history. This chapter points to alternative histories in the novel (which are currently based on a true story).
The second chapter of the work is based on the analysis of alternative novel Fatherland by Robert Harrison. Visions of post-war world were indicated on the basis of on alternate background of the novel, which is the post-war image of the victorious German Reich. It indicates how the German state works.
In the third chapter, I analyze the content of the novel. There are also made efforts in order to make an assessment.
1. History as a common subject in literature
Literature has always fascinated people but the mechanisms of this fascination and the real role which literature plays are not easy to analyze because they are also difficult to perceptible. Nevertheless, it is the fact that a literary work has an enormous influence on a reader and on the society. A literary work can also change the world in which the people live. Thus, it has many different functions. It serves as entertainment, educational tool, as well as psychotherapeutic instrument. A literary work allows the reader to move into another world, to know another culture, space and foreign aspects of life, even an unreal reality. It means that the reader has the possibility to face situations which would not happen in the real life, which would put him in danger or which he could perceive as something artificial. Meeting such situations in literature, the reader gains the opportunity to train his behaviors, his reactions and to cope with the circumstances which he would not experience in a normal way. Literature enables people to develop themselves. This development follows not only in the cognitive sense, it means literature is not only knowledge source. It is also the base for the factual acquaintance which refers to the history, geography, science and other important aspects of human functioning. The creditability of literature in this case is secondary issue. A literary work can promote reality which has a warped picture, it does not have to reflect the facts. Literature allows people to enrich their imagination, fantasy and invention. Besides, it also gives people the possibility to put themselves in different circumstances, to find out how to manage some incidents or how to organize different areas of human life and the world in which human beings function.
Literary works raise many different questions which can have multifaceted character and dimension. The authors quite often reach for political, social or historical subjects because they usually want to influence the awareness of society, as well as on existing of stereotypes. In this context the literates choose really diversified and mixed problems to write about. However, quite often they deal with historical themes. Literature is namely close connected with history. In order to understand these relations and connections it is also necessary to explain the notion of history. Only then it is possible to analyze history as the subject of literary works or as inspiration of literary works. These aspects are the content of the following chapter which describes also the functioning of history in literature and how this issue has changed over long periods of time.
1.1 The presence of history in literature
As it was said before, first of all it is essential to give an explanation of the term “history”. History means the study of the past what leads to understanding the significance and dynamics of the relationship between reason and consequence in the process of development of human societies. The main property of history is its wide scope of investigation. It results from the fact that history is connected with wide perspectives, general explanations, and fundamental questions. Characteristics of history are also specific details and events, as well as particular interpretation of sources and evidence. The key issue of history is not so much its capacity to master numerous details or to register knowledge of the past, it is rather to interpret, to take care of a rich variety of sources in order to draw out their general significance or to discover it for human understanding of the essence of change. Some historians say that history is not a discipline of science, but it is a branch representing the arts or humanities. History can be perceived as a social science, but even in this case it does not mean a scientific area. (Nasson, online sources)
It has to be emphasized that history has important meaning for human societies. First of all, it was a narrative account of different past circumstances. In the early concepts, history referred to imaginative course of events. However, it included also the narrative and chronicle aspects. So, the history and story were treated then equally. Such conceptualization of history which authorizes imagined and invented events has been present till today. It is used especially in the form of imaginative literature, as for instance the novel. It can be a work in the area of fictional realism, as is the story of G.J. Farrell “The Singapore Grip” which describes the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1941, mixing established historical facts and devised history. It can be also the special novelistic conformation which refers to a counterfactual history, as in the story of Robert Harris “Fatherland” which describes the specific events of the Second World War, and namely the realization of german assumptions. (Nasson, online sources)
In the time of fifteenth and sixteenth century, the meaning of history concentrated rather on the real past events. In result, the notion of story tended towards different usages which contained less documented aspects of past events which in addition had an imaginative and fantastic character. Then history began to employ the distinctive form or sense of organized knowledge of the past. The term of some organization of knowledge of the past was a general issue of the earlier sense of a specific written or oral account. While developing of this sense of history occurred the distinctly modern meanings and role of historian, historical and historic. (Nasson, online sources)
Researchers who deal with historiography and culture have proved that in contemporary times this has become the pervasive and still present sense of history. At the same time, it is relevant to note the build-up of a further significant idea of history which goes beyond the fundamental meaning of an organized knowledge of past circumstances. It is difficult to determine its intellectual source exactly, but it is the essence of history, its continuous character which harmonizes with the nature of human self-development. This thinking way is predominant in European mainstream what started in the eighteenth century. Its expression was the appearance of the new forms of universal histories, as well as world histories. In this context Raymond Williams took the arguments of cultural critic. According to this concept, the newer post-eighteenth century sense of history is closed in the statement that the past events are viewed not as specific or bounded histories but in form of continuous and connected process. (Nasson, online sources)
Historians treat these continuous and connected processes as history only in circumstances in which they are systematized and interpreted in a new general and more and more abstract sense. Besides, up against the prevailing new stress on the working of history as human self-progression, history reflects to knowledge of the past, but it is also connected with the present and with the future. The mentioned process means thus a mix of past, present and future. (Nasson, online sources)
It can be also said that history encrypted some versions of intellectual systems:
- One of them has been the European Enlightenment awareness of the expansion of civilization;
- The other one has an idealistic character and is based on the philosophy of Hegel. It is an unavoidable process of world-historical movement over time;
- The third sense of process arose in the nineteenth century. It had a political character. It was connected with assumptions of French Revolution and with Marxism. History gained then a range of mass historical forces. (Nasson, online sources)
In the twentieth century, the researchers started to speak about historicism. They associated this term with the analysis of the past as being historicist. Characteristic for this direction was the fact that the current events were explained with the past occurrences. Historicism had also an ideological form and controversial perception. It has been used namely in order to disparage the deeper meaning of history as a continuing progression of productive human periods. Historicism has been also used to criticize not only the Marxism, but also idealism and Enlightenment defining history as a developing process. (Nasson, online sources)
As important as history is also literature. It reflects and expresses the cultural output of various societies. It includes all concrete verbal creatures, which have an oral or written form, and namely:
- Works of art (mostly belles-lettres);
- Usable texts (applied literature). (Skwarczyńska 1954: 32-37)
Literature has a wide range of motives and background. One of them is history. The authors choose historical subjects for different reasons. Sometimes they want to buoy up the particular nation, sometimes they intend to develop the historical knowledge of particular society. They also reach for historical plot because they think it can be interesting. Nevertheless, the history build often the structure of a literary work. The history allows namely to inspire following concerns:
- Critical discussion between different perspectives, interpretations and representations of the past;
- Critical assessment of the sources;
- Discussion about narrative, explanation and analysis;
- Regular study of main processes which appear in different societies;
- Discussion about results of historical events which can impact the present time and the future;
- Analysis of reaction, interpretation and transformation as the essential mechanisms which create historical process;
- Concerning the past events in the view of the current reaction for them, for instance of the critical evaluation of certain actions. (Bentley 1998: 200-205)
The great examples of the usage of historical motives in literature are historical novels. The most famous historical novels in the world are for instance: Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius”, Kristin Hannah’s “The Nightingale”, Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Muskateers”,Walter Scotts “Waverley”, Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of two Cities” or Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind”. All those publications had an enormous impact on the generations of people who often identified themselves with the main characters of the mentioned novels. That was the goal of the writers, it means, to inspire the readers to their own experiences, to discover their own perception of the events with historical background, to try to enter into feelings of representatives of concrete time.
All mentioned examples show that history functions in literature in a different way. The historical researchers of writers who undertook such subjects lead them into different directions. Hence, important is also the interpretation of the readers who can also have different historical sources and different historical knowledge. However, historical plots of literary works cannot be indifferent in their perception. They always inspire to discussions, debates, critics or eulogies, and sometimes even to pathos. Hence, their impressions are unforgettable, independent on the fact whether they base on real events or on invented material.
A particular forms of literature in which historical facts are used equally as background as well as a part of presented stories are biographical and autobiographical books. Those special types of novels are, in most cases, build around historical facts.
It may be told that autobiographical and biographical novels cannot exist without historical facts. It is a common knowledge that it is impossible to describe someone life without historical background. However it is important to underline that those historical facts, which are milestones or only background for told story, often are important only for the main character.
Therefore, biographical and autobiographical novels can be used as sources of less common known historical facts. Examples of such books are biographies of artists, in particular painters, musicians and actors, because the history facts, that are a background of their lives may be spotted in their works. For example in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “1812 overture” it is noticeable that author were under overtaking impact after Napoleon’s march through Europe, and his battle under Moscow. (Holdenvoid 1996: 95)
Next great example is biography of Charlie Chaplin, who officially were against Adolf Hitler. His opinion were showed in his parody of Adolf Hitler in 1940 political satire comedy drama movie “The Great Dictator”. One of less known historical fact, that was widely described in Charlie Chaplin biography was the sentence of death for Chaplin that was signed by Adolf Hitler. (Chaplin 2012: 112)
Presented above examples are only a tip of iceberg. In every biography and autobiography novel there are described less or more known historical facts. It is obvious that those facts are mentioned in such books, because there is impossible to present a life of someone and someone’s work without historical background and its impact on every aspect of this person life. Therefore, as it was mentioned, this type of books is great source of historical facts.
1.2 Different types of history
First of all, it has to be said what is history. According to Arthur Marwick, historians do not deal with reconstruction of the past. They rather deliver knowledge about the past. Hence, the best and the most succinct definition of history says that it includes the bodies of knowledge referring to the past which is delivered by historians, together with all factors implied in this process, that means, communication of, and teaching about that knowledge. (Marwick, online sources)
The mentioned knowledge of the past seems to be a key issue for all societies. The present events and the coming occurrences is determinate to the high degree by the past. The knowledge of the past does not, obviously, ensure simple solutions to the problems which appear in the current time. However, the knowledge of the past could prevent many happening which destroy the world order. Besides, without knowledge of the past, people would be deprived of their identity and they would feel lost in particular time frames. That is why the history should be as accurate as it is possible, it should be grounded on the evidence and logical concept, and not on illusive theories or political ideologies. (Marwick, online sources)
Therefore, it has to be mentioned that this kind of knowledge can be acquired through studying historical treasures and traces which were left by the former societies, that means, the primary sources. The secondary sources are also significant, but they should be confronted with other evidences. The secondary sources are namely articles and book which were written up later by historians. They usually base on raw material of history which is then converted into history. The differentiation of primary and secondary sources seems to be the crucial one because the genuine primary source does usually not allow doubts about particular events. However, those sources are not always available, and second, one source does not bring much knowledge. (Marwick, online sources)
Reading through an edited selection of abstracts from primary sources should have the beneficial effect of bringing one in contact with the thinking way and language of the former generations. In case of quick knowledge acquiring, the secondary sources can serve as authorities because the knowledge of the rules of history can be used then according to the need.
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