6/1/2023 0 Comments The overstory sparknotes![]() ![]() It does not know borders nor perhaps the difference between war and peace, as “death comes for everyone, even without any wars. His only objective is to maximize the chances of his own survival, with no moral regard for others.Īn Untouched House offers no sides to be on, no causes to fight for other than one’s own survival. Early on, he gets ordered to search a nearby town and ends up seeking shelter in an abandoned mansion. An Untouched House relates a nameless protagonist’s recollections of the last months of the war, in which he and his group of partisans wander through an unnamed strip of land, which at times falls under allied or partisan control, and at others back under German occupation. This is true for his two most famous novels, The Tears of the Acacias and The Darkroom of Damocles, and equally so for his short novella, An Untouched House, which first appeared in 1950. Within a year, he saw his own country follow Poland and fall under German occupation, which would go on to last nearly until the end of the war in 1945.Īgainst the backdrop of these facts, it is not surprising that much of Hermans’s earlier writing has the war at its core. ![]() It was the very day Nazi Germany launched their assault on Poland-September 1, 1939-that the Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans turned eighteen. ![]()
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