On the Perception of Love and Violence in the Stories Die rote Katze and Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen by Luise Rinser
Ali Osman Öztürk, Kadir Albayrak, Otto HolzapfelLuise Rinser, one of the most influential and controversial writers of the postwar period, was known for her political satire and initially published stories with religious themes wherein the choices of the characters are called into question. In Die rote Katze (The Red Cat, 1956), for example, a boy kills a cat whose existence demands a share of the food in order to protect his famine-stricken family. Meanwhile, in Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen (A Bunch of White Daffodils, 1956), on the other hand, we observe a dying woman who, through a fictional dialogue with an angel, reveals herself to be a devoted mother and wife. What these two narrative figures have in common is that they act unflinchingly in emergencies, not based on rigid traditional values but on acutely necessary considerations. This study examines and discusses the value orientation of Rinser’s two narrative figures. The perception of values is explained in particular from the perspective of Reinhard Mokrosch, who attempts a further religious classification of these values by classifying them into three categories, namely Christian denominational religious values (love of one’s neighbor, love of one’s enemy, nonviolence, and pacifism), general religious values (respect for life, human dignity, and fellow human beings), and inter-religious values (compassion, charity, partnership, respect, consideration, tolerance, and love).
Zur Wahrnehmung von Liebe und Gewalt in den Erzählungen Die rote Katze und Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen von Luise Rinser
Ali Osman Öztürk, Kadir Albayrak, Otto HolzapfelLuise Rinser, eine der bedeutendsten und kontrovers beurteilten Schriftstellerinnen der Nachkriegszeit, zeichnete sich durch ihre politisch-kritische Haltung aus und veröffentlichte anfangs Erzählungen, die religiöse Themen behandeln, bei denen die Entscheidungen der Figuren in Frage gestellt werden. In der Erzählung Die rote Katze (Erstveröffentlichung 1956) z.B. tötet ein Junge, um seine unter Hungersnot leidende Familie zu schützen, eine Katze, die mit ihrer Existenz Anteil an den Lebensmitteln der Familie beansprucht. In der Erzählung Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen (Erstveröffentlichung 1956) hingegen beobachtet man eine Frau, die im Sterben liegt und sich im Verlauf ihres fiktiven Dialogs mit einem Engel als eine hingebungsvolle Mutter und Ehefrau erweist. Gemeinsam ist diesen beiden Erzählfiguren, dass sie inNotsituationen unbeirrt nicht nach strengen, überkommenen Wertvorstellungen, sondern nach akut nötigen Erwägungen handeln. In der Studie werden diese beiden Erzählfiguren von Rinser in Bezug auf ihre Werteorientierung hin analysiert und diskutiert. Die Wertwahrnehmung des Wertebegriffs wird insbesondere aus der Sicht von Reinhard Mokrosch erläutert, der eine weitere Klassifizierung dieser Werte auf religiöser Basis versucht, indem er sie in drei Kategorien einteilt, nämlich in christlich-konfessionelle religiöse Werte (‚Nächstenliebe, Feindesliebe, Gewaltlosigkeit, Pazifismus‘), allgemeine religiöse Werte (‚Ehrfurcht vor Leben, Menschenwürde, Mitmenschlichkeit‘) und interreligiöse Werte (‚Mitleid, Nächstenliebe, Partnerschaft, Achtung, Rücksicht, Toleranz, Liebe‘).
This study examines how love and violence are perceived in Luise Rinser’s Die rote Katze (1956) and Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen (1956). Luise Rinser is a significant figure in 20𝑡ℎ-century German literature. The story Die rote Katze is about a child who kills a cat in a postwar period to save his family and himself from starvation, and Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen tells the story of a mother who takes the blame for her son’s crime so that he is not seen as a fratricide. In the study, both stories were analyzed in terms of value orientations.
The section on the concept of value explains the concept of value and the perception of value, particularly from the perspective of Reinhard Mokrosch. Mokrosch attempts yet another religious classification of these values, dividing them into three categories: Christian confessional religious (love of neighbor, love of enemy, nonviolence, and pacifism), general religious (reverence for life, human dignity, and fellow humanity), and inter-religious (compassion, love of neighbor, partnership, respect, consideration, tolerance, and love’) (vgl. Mokrosch, 2013, pp. 48–49). This religion-oriented tripartition of values can help us better understand the earlier narrative characters of Luise Rinser, adevout but critical Catholic, who motivates their actions not by prescribed values but by humane necessities. Following the value orientation concepts, the section titled Luise Rinser discusses the author’s life and the subjects she addresses in her works.
The difference between her and other writers dealing with the same issues is that she may have experiencedWorldWar I and World War II as a woman, a child, a wife, a mother, or a lover and views the events through these lenses. Rinser, a devout Catholic who is critical of the church hierarchy and dogmas, has always stood up to those who created the conditions that condemned her to starvation and even death at various points in her life. She gains endurance as she transposes her feelings of joy, sadness, and depression into a fictional reality.
Subsequently, the two stories are thematically evaluated in the sections Die rote Katze and Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen. The discussion section reveals which elements are evaluated in both stories as the evaluating subject, the valued object, and the evaluating act. In the context of these evaluations, the following comments about Rinser’ examined works were made in the conclusion section.
Rinser’s characters are not satisfied with the prescribed/handed down values; instead, they orient themselves to the current situation, which forces them to broaden the range of the value act. The valuing subject hereby values the valued object in such a way that it does not lose its value but, if necessary, exchanges its value with another object (love of animals with the love of one’s neighbor or reverence with the love of children), which requires an emergency decision on the part of the valuing subject at the time. Rinser’s characters adhere to prescribed confessional-Christian (in our case generally religious or inter-religious) value concepts prior to the moment of their decisive act of valuation. They are then concerned in the emergency that has arrived with questioning the prescribed attitude, as a result of which they decide to act according to what is unavoidable in each case. Rather than rigid insistence on prescriptions, this deliberate approach makes the corresponding characters appear more humanistic. In an emergency, they think differently and devise another solution to get themselves out of trouble. If the 13-year-old child would turn a blind eye to the cat (in Die rote Katze) (love of animals) as a creature demanding food, the family (love of family) could be in even a worse predicament. In the case of the woman (in Ein Bündel weißer Narzissen), there are two considerations: on the one hand, if she breaks her vow at the altar and does not marry, the family may face financial hardship. On the other hand, if she told the truth about her younger son’s accidental death, she could sentence the older one, who caused the accident, to life in prison for fratricide in front of the father. Thus, in both cases, one value object is exchanged for another out of necessity, without the previous one losing any of its value.
