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Example research essay topic: Father In Law Father And Son - 1,087 words

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... have interfered before it would have even come to a production and he never would have found anyone to stage it. He wrote his play in such a way that its audience wouldnt take the Germany of The Condemned of Altona literally no one would see the play as a story of a German ex-soldier in 1959 but as a denouncement against the cruelties in Algeria committed by France. Once again, Sartre goes back to his philosophical ideas about the question of free-will, choice and guilt. His protagonist, Frantz von Gerlach, is a Nazi war criminal who for the past thirteen years has lived in voluntary isolation in his fathers mansion. This was a choice Frantz had made straight after he returned from the polish front in 1946 in order to escape the Nuremberg trials as well as Germany's post-war agony.

Locked away in a windowless room, Frantz refuses to communicate with family members with the exception of his sister Leni with whom he leads a incestuous relationship. Leni supplies him with information regarding crimes committed by the Allies against the German people, however hiding from him the actual truth that Germany currently enjoys an economic boom. The actual motivation behind Frantz's self-imposed isolation is his desperate search for a justification of the acts of violence he carried out as the butcher of Smolensk and clings to a vain hope that this will be found in the perpetuation of Germany's post-war agony. Whilst engaging this fantasy he demands from Leni reports of Germany's continued destruction. The price he pays for this is incest. Therefore, Frantz attempts to escape from bad faith whilst persuading Lenis madness permitting her only to make love to a von Gerlach.

During these thirteen years Gerlach's father, now suffering from throat cancer, has only six months to live and tries in vain to contact his eldest son. In his despair to contact his son he creates an ingenious plot to force Frantz out of his reclusion. Von Gerlach demanded the return of his younger son, Werner, and his wife to the family mansion in Altona (Hamburg) to be within his sphere of power. As a businessman who by now has given up his conscience in favour of economic success, von Gerlach represents Sartre's chief.

As Sartre explains Frantz's father is in the image of those German industrialists whom the journals and magazines used to baptist giants who have reconstructed Germany while in fact they helped Hitler try to destroy it. They are the same people. 1 To end Frantz's incarceration von Gerlach persuades Johanna to infiltrate his sons upstairs world and inform him that Germany has now reached a level of previously unknown prosperity, destroying Lenis lies and proving to Frantz how useless his escape from bad faith is. To bribe Johanna into carrying out this act, her father-in-law offers to make her husband, Werner, the head of his shipbuilding company therefore humiliating Werner and underlining his mediocrity and obedience. Johanna realises what life for Werner and herself would become if she accepted. He would have to endure Lenis cynical sadism and his brothers madness in order to free Werner and herself and enable them to return to Hamburg where Werner was once a successful lawyer. Johanna co-operates with her father-in-law and enters Frantz's upstairs world using Lenis signal.

She then confronts him engaging the final meeting between father and son. According to Sartre himself, the whole play centres around the problem of filial and paternal love 2 or, as I interpret it, with mans relationship with the absolute and the final scene between father and son sets the stage for them to realise that they are both guilty of errors. It is true to say that Frantz is the one person his father truly loved because he sees him as the reincarnation of himself. Frantz's passion for power is actually that of his own father. This can be compared to God creating man in his own image presuming there is such a God. How much choice did Franz have during the war?

Was he forced into committing the crimes he did? Was he manipulated by his father as he collaborated with the Nazi regime wasnt he the product of the standard German upbringing of a boy in these times? Again Sartre makes you believe, that man is fundamentally free and therefore makes the decisions to take which ever course of actions he chooses. In the case of this play, Frantz chose to commit the crimes he did as the butcher of Smolensk himself and nothing can justify that fact.

For thirteen years he avoided accepting his responsibility, but now realises that he must face up to his guilt. For Frantz and his father suicide seems to be the only option: Frantz could escape prosecution and end his guilt and his fathers battle with throat cancer would be over. Frantz realises he has never been anything but a pawn in a game he never understood along with all the other pawns whos freedom is decided by a system their ancestors created. Frantz's last despairing cry Jai t, (I have been or lived), is the final irony. It seems to me that both of these works read more like philosophy essays than conventional plays. It may be well be, that Sartre himself always thought of his plays as writing rather than stage material.

Indeed, when I read Altona for the first time after I had seen it as a production at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, it was obvious that these philosophical and political enterprises were clearer in reading than in the performance itself which has surely to do with the complexity of Sartre's attitude. In either way, Sartre's plays are an important part of the literary history of the last century as his dramatic skills manifest themselves in producing dramas which can interest those who have no knowledge of his philosophical view. 1 Interview published in Les Lettres Franaises, September 17, 1959 2 Interview published in Le Figaro, September 11, 1959 Jean-Paul Sartre Philosophy in the World published by NLB and Verso Editions, London published by The Harvester Press Limited, Brighton Camus and Sartre Critical Appraisals General Editors Foreword, 1972, 1974 /published by The University of Chicago Press, 1996 published b Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Reineck bei Hamburg The Devil and the Good Lord; and two other plays published by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Reineck bei Hamburg The Condemned of Altona; Men without Shadows; The Flies This essay contains exactly 2036 words puh. Bibliography:


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