The Kommandant's Mistress
Page 31
The epigraph for [Part Three] of the novel is from the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament: "The dead know nothing." (Ecclesiastes 9:5). What does this mean? Who in the novel is "dead"? In what ways are they "dead"? Can this epigraph apply to anyone besides the major protagonists? If so, to whom? How? Why? Why is it that the "dead" know nothing?
Max's Six-Pointed Star
In his part of the novel, Max tells us that he cut a six-pointed star on his forearm and that when he showed it to Rachel, telling her, Jetzt bin ich ein Jude, she slapped him [1:5:2]. Why has Max called the six-pointed star "her name" [1:5:2]? What was Max trying to do? Why does he speak to her in German? Does he really believe that this Star of David on his forearm will make the two of them closer? If so, how would it make them closer?
In Rachel's version of this story, she claims that Max drew the six-pointed star on his forearm in black ink and that she cut this star with his service dagger [2:8:1]. She also claims to have cut the capital letter K beside the star "so he would never be free: K for Kommandant" [2:8:1]. We learn that when Max said, "Jetzt bin ich ein Jude," he was saying "Now I'm a Jew." Rachel says, "Now you're a Jew," — in German — and slaps him [2:8:1]. Why does Rachel cut the Star of David in his forearm? Why does she say, "Now you're a Jew" in German after she's gone through all the trouble of making him think that she doesn't understand that language?
Why does Rachel get sexually excited about cutting Max's arm? Is she interpreting the excitement she feels about having power over him as sexual excitement? If not, why is she excited?
Does Max interpret his power over Rachel and over the inmates in the camp sexually? If not, why does he always want sex with her when Actions or Selections are going on?
In this scene, where Rachel physically tortures and hurts Max, is this the closest Rachel ever gets to understanding him and his behavior? If not, does she ever understand Max? If not in this scene, can you point out another in which you think Rachel understands Max better?
Are Max and Rachel alike? In what ways? Why does Rachel feel shame when she's excited after cutting the star on his arm? Why does she run away from him back to the office? Why does she first tell us, at the beginning of that scene, that she "never cried" and then immediately contradict herself by admitting that she did cry "once" (after she gets sexually aroused by hurting Max when she cuts the star into his forearm)? (She either "never cried" or she did cry, even if it was only "once".)
Why does she insist that was the only time she ever cried? Do you believe that that was the only time she ever cried, in other words, is she a reliable narrator?
Why did she cry then? Why does she say, after admitting that she cried, that, "even then, it didn't make any difference" [2:8:1]? What does she mean?
The Three Different Endings
Spoiler Alert:
If you read this before reading the novel,
please be aware that it reveals plot elements
when answering questions posed by readers
since the novel's publication.
Please do not feel morally obligated
to read this section
of the Revised Edition
if you only want to read the novel itself.
Thanks, Alexandria
There are three different endings to the novel, and all three of the endings are true at the same time. (Trust me on this: I wouldn't have written a novel with three different endings only to then tell you to ignore two of them.) Also, on a subconscious level, you already know how all three endings can be true all at the same time. These questions will help you understand on a conscious level and discuss the importance of the different endings.
Max's Ending
In Max's version [1:10:10], he claims that he found Rachel and went to her home, bringing her a copy of the poetry collection titled The Dead Bodies That Line the Street. He reads a poem called "In the Bedroom of the Kommandant," in which it is implied that the Kommandant has told the Jewish inmate that he loves her [1:1:7]. When Marta confronts Max with the poetry book, she mentions the poem, saying, "You didn't tell her that you loved her, did you, Max?" and "Even you couldn't love a Jew, could you, Max?")
Why does Max claim that he went to find Rachel? What is it that he wants her to understand? Why does he use "her words" instead of his own, and what, exactly, does he mean by that statement? What is the symbolic meaning of the last sentence of Max's version: "The sun glowed on The Dead Bodies, lying there between us" [1:10:10]? Why are the dead bodies still between them and what is the significance of the sun's glowing on them?
Rachel's Ending
In Rachel's version of the story [2:10:10], she claims that she shot the Kommandant when he "brought The Dead Bodies" to her. The last sentence of her section is this: "In my hand, the white towel fluttered in the early morning breeze" [1:10:10]. What is the symbolic significance of the difference between the last sentence in Max's version and the last sentence in Rachel's version?
What is the symbolic significance of the white towel? Is someone surrendering? Seeking a truce? A cease-fire? What?
If Max went to Rachel seeking forgiveness, why is it that his story ends with The Dead Bodies between them, while hers ends with the white towel? If Max is telling the truth, then shouldn't Rachel's version have ended with The Dead Bodies between them, and the white towel at the end of his version?
Is Rachel the one who's surrendered, ceased fire, found peace? Has she, indeed, found peace? If not, what evidence can you present to show that she has not? If so, what evidence from the novel illustrates this?
Has Rachel found forgiveness? If so, who has been forgiven: Rachel? Leah? Max? All the Nazis?
Additional Questions on Max's and Rachel's Endings
Max claims that he went to find Rachel after the War, that he saw her several times [1:1:1], [1:3:5]; then that he found her and read "In the Bedroom of the Kommandant" to her, which he had memorized [1:10:10]. Did Max really go to find Rachel? If so, why? If not, why not? If not, why did he claim that he did? What was he expecting from her?
Rachel constantly claims to see a car outside the house [2:7:6], [2:8:10], and is running away because she thinks she's seen Max [2:3:9], [2:4:9], [2:6:10]. Has she seen him? If she hasn't, why does she think she does?
Does Max actually come to her house? If so, why? If not, why not? Did Rachel really shoot and kill Max at her home? Rachel's ending is true, i.e., she is telling the "truth" as she sees it, so why are the two endings different? Is he lying? If so, why? To whom?
If Max is also telling the truth as he sees it, then why is his ending so dramatically different from hers? Why is Max's family not with him after the War [1:2:10], [1:4:6], [1:4:10], [1:7:10]?
What does Max's version of their post-War encounter reveal about his character, nature, and personality? What does Rachel's version of their post-War encounter reveal about her character, nature, and personality?
Is it symbolic that Rachel finally "confronts" Max [2:10:10] after she's completed writing her book about her experiences in the camp, i.e., Part Two of The Kommandant's Mistress [2:10:6], [2:10:8]? If so, how? Why? What is the significance of the fact that David does not return home with Althea until after Rachel has completed her book about the camp [2:10:8]?
The Biographies of Part Three
(Note: The "biographies" of Part Three are entirely fictional. Over the years, many scholars and reviewers have written that I "fictionalized" — in Parts One & Two — the "real people" whose "biographies comprise Part Three". I thank those writers most sincerely for the compliment on my writing style in that third section as I apparently succeeded in imitating the countless number of biographical encyclopedia entries on in/famous or historical persons that I read to learn the style of such entries. Closer examination, however, reveals that Part 3 must be fictional since no single person, Nazi or Jew, could possibly have done everything I say that Max and Rachel did.
I didn't want Max to represent only one Nazi but, rather, all the Nazis so
I could show all the atrocities they committed against the Jews. Thus, he's at virtually every Nuremburg rally where Hitler, Himmler, or Goebbels spoke [1:1:3], [1:3:2], [1:6:3], etc.
Max participates in the Night of the Broken Glass [1:3:3]; in the Night of the Long Knives (the purge of the BrownShirts, also known as Storm-Troopers, or SA; whose members were the precursors and competitors of the Schutzstaffeln, SS, who wore black uniforms) [1:6:4]; and in the Wannsee Conference, where the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" — killing them "more efficiently" with cyanide gas rather than with the carbon monoxide trucks which had been in use [1:5:1].
Max heads a Mobile Killing Squad (Einsatzkommando) and instructs the soldiers on the correct way to shoot prisoners in the forest [1:9:2]. He serves alongside the Army — as a member of the SS — at the Eastern Front, where he's wounded by German fire after he mistakes fellow soldiers for partisans [1:10:2]; he meets Himmler [1:5:3] and is promoted through the ranks of the SS until he becomes Kommandant of a Concentration Camp [1:3:1].
No one Nazi could have done all that. Though Max is a "real person" as a literary character, he is a representative, symbolic Nazi; his career and life reflect everything the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany and in the other conquered territories.
Likewise, Rachel is not modeled after any single Jewish person from that period, though I did interview many survivors. I also read memoirs, diaries, letters, autobiographies, and biographies of camp inmates who survived and of those who perished. Rachel is symbolic of what all the Jews in Europe experienced (hence, her family's moving from country to country in an attempt to escape the encroaching Nazi destruction and persecution).
Rachel is at the Goebbels'-organized Book Burning with her father and uncle [2:9:10]; she and her family are in Czechoslovakia when Jews are deprived of their citizenship [2:1:3]; she passes as a non-Jew ("Aryan") in order to get food for her family [2:8:8]; she is in the Warsaw Ghetto [2:3:6], [2:3:10], [2:4:7], [2:5:6]. Rachel has encounters with the Gestapo [2:8:2], [2:8:4]; with the Camp's Underground [2:1:8], [2:2:1], [2:2:10], etc.
She is in the Camp proper [2:7:5]; builds roads with the labor crew supervised by the Camp's Kapo and Nazi guards [2:4:3]; is in a "Selection" upon her arrival at the Camp, where Jews are cursorily inspected by a Doctor (the most infamous being Josef Mengele at Auschwitz-Birkenau) and arbitrarily assigned to go to the "Left" or to the "Right", one of which will immediately be gassed, while the other will remain as laborers in the camp [2:6:7].
Just as no single Nazi could have possibly done everything that Max does in the novel, no individual Jew could have experienced everything that Rachel does. She, too — despite being a "real person" in literary terms — is representative and symbolic of all the Jews persecuted, enslaved, imprisoned, tortured, killed, and systematically exterminated by the Nazis.
Spoiler Alert:
If you read this before reading the novel,
please be aware that it reveals plot elements
when answering questions posed by readers
since the novel's publication.
Please do not feel morally obligated
to read this section
of the Revised Edition
if you only want to read the novel itself.
Thanks, Alexandria
Questions about the Endings in the Biographies of Part Three
In the third section of the novel, the ostensible biographical encyclopedia entries — which are entirely fictional — it states that Max was "executed by hanging at the concentration camp where he had served" [Part Three, "Maximilian von Walther", last lines] and that Rachel, who is called Leah, "apparently did not survive the concentration camps" [Part Three, "Leah Sarah Abramson", last lines]. If all three of the endings in this novel are all true at the same time, then why are all the endings different?
What do the different endings say about how human beings who apparently participate in the same events experience them in various ways?
What do the three different endings say about our understanding of history itself and supposedly objective history books?
The "Biographer" of Part Three
The "biographer" of Part Three (whom I've always thought of as a man) does not seem very objective. For example, he consistently calls Max by his last name, yet calls Rachel/Leah by her first name? Why does he do this? Is it sexism? Is it something else? If something else, what is it?
The biographer also presents statements of fact about Max in a more negative light by not providing any interpretation of Max's actions. For example, he writes, "Though [von Walther] completed the course work for a Doktorat in Germanic literature and successfully passed his comprehensive examinations in 1939, von Walther failed to complete his dissertation" [dissertation, Part Three, Max]. Why didn't Max complete his doctoral dissertation? Did it have anything to do with the start of the War? Why does the biographer imply that Max didn't complete his dissertation for some other reason?
The biographer also provides the following information about Max: "By his longtime mistress, Dianne Braun, who lived in the Nazi-sponsored maternity home Lebensborn, von Walther fathered a son Klaus (born October 1940) who died from injuries suffered in an air raid in February 1944. Von Walther did not attend his son's funeral" [funeral, Part Three, Max]. In Rachel's version of the story, however, we hear a one-sided telephone conversation where Max's former mistress, the mother of the son killed in the air raid, apparently tells Max about the boy's death and funeral only after they have taken place [2:6:5]. Therefore, Max could not have attended his own son's funeral. Did the biographer not know this piece of information or did he intentionally leave it out? If the former, how could he not have known if he'd exhaustively and professionally researched Max's life to the extent that he knew about the mistress, the son, and that Max did not attend his son's funeral? If the latter, and the biographer intentionally left out the fact that Max didn't know about his son's death and funeral until after they had taken place, why did the biographer leave out that vital information? Is the biographer trying to influence his readers' opinions of Max? If so, how? If not, why do you think he wrote the biography in this manner?
The biographer also presents information about Rachel in a more positive light than others might have seen it either during or after the War. In fact, the biographer of Leah Sarah Abramson does not even seem to know that she did, indeed, survive the camp, and changed her name to Rachel. Instead, he writes, "Apparently Leah Sarah Abramson did not survive the concentration camps" [last lines, Part Three, Rachel]. Why did the biographer say this? Did he really not know that Rachel and Leah are the same person? Does the biographer even know anything about Rachel/Leah after the War? If he did know they were the same person, and also knew about what happened to Rachel after the War, then why didn't he include that information in his Biography of Rachel/Leah? Was he trying to protect Rachel? Or was there some other reason he ended his biography of her in the manner he did? If so, what might it be?
Additional Questions Concerning the Three Different Endings
To whom is Max speaking when he says things like, "No, I wasn't afraid. I wasn't strong enough" [last lines 1.1.4], "I've always told the truth" [1.3.2], and "No, that wasn't running away. That was saving myself" [last lines 1.3.8]? Look at the last scene in Part 1, Chapter 9, when Max is with a soldier who is ordering Max to sign something [1.9.10]. Is the soldier German? Is he a Nazi? What document is Max signing? Is it a confession? If so, how is Max portraying himself and his actions? If it's not a confession, what might it be? Is Max, as the soldier asks, leaving anything important out of his version of events? If so, what? If so, why? If not, why not?
Are the statements listed in this paragraph ("I wasn't afraid: I wasn't strong enough", "I've always told the truth", "That wasn't running away: that was saving myself") related in any way to the document Max is told to sign? If so, how? If not, why not? Can you find other examples, like these, when Max is specifically addressing someone who is not named in the story? What
do all these examples tell you about Max's character, his nature, his personality?
Did Max really go to find Rachel as he claims, or didn't he? If Max didn't go to find Rachel and was, instead, captured, imprisoned, and executed (as it indicates at the end of Part Three), then why and to whom did he claim that he had found her? Does Max really believe that Rachel would have forgiven him had he gone to her after the War?
Did Rachel really shoot Max or did she only shoot him symbolically? Even if she shoots him only symbolically, why does she have to imagine such a violent ending to their relationship? Why does Rachel continually tell everyone, even her husband David, that she was never in any of the camps [2:1:2], [2:2:8]?
Why did Rachel change her name from Leah (which means "weary") to Rachel (which means "lamb")? Does Rachel view herself as a sacrifice? If so, when was she a sacrifice: in the Ghetto, in the camp, after the War, all of the aforementioned times? If so, to whom or for what reason was she a sacrifice?
Why did she try to commit suicide after the War, when she was free [2:1:4];? While in the Ghetto, celebrating Shabbas, Rachel claims that she'd kill herself before she'd let herself suffer at the hands of the Germans [2:3:10] but she does not attempt to commit suicide in the Camps: Why or why not?
Rachel as the Kommandant's "Mistress"
Note on novel's title: The title of this novel was originally The Kommandant, since I viewed it as three different versions of Max. One of the Vice-Presidents at HarperCollins, which originally published the novel, wanted to put the novel's focus more on Rachel, and suggested the new title, The Kommandant's Mistress, based on the "most persistent rumor" of what happened to Rachel/Leah in the camp, and modeling the title after John Fowles' classic The French Lieutenant's Woman, where the "woman" of that title, though considered a whore and virtually a prostitute by everyone else in the novel, is actually a virgin who never had intimate relations of any kind with the French Lieutenant, with whom she was in love, who had promised to marry her, and whom she discovered to be unfaithful to her before she slept with him.