Write three or four paragraphs on Kressman Taylor's Unknown Address.
Don't forget to mention the development of the two main characters and the sociohistorical context in which they find themselves.
In the last paragraph, give us your opinion of the story, and describe the way in which you responded when you first read it.
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Address Unknown was writen by Katherine Kressmann in 1938. Firstly it was publised as series of articles in a weekly magazine. Due to its huge success it was inmediately printed as a book. It was translated into some foreigner languages but it was forbiden in Germany.
The publisher thought that the articles were very hard to be written by a woman so he suggested to publish them under the name of Kressmann Taylor.
By the time the book was written many american people weren’t completely aware about what was happening in Germany
The book is written in the way of posted letters between the two main characters. Max who is a single jew living in San Francisco and Martin who is a married german that comes back to Germany with his family by the time Adolf Hitler was going into german government. Max and Martin are partnership in an art gallery busines.
Griselle is Max’s younger sister. Martin and Griselle has been lovers and Max, knows the secret.
Along the letters we can appreciate how human being can change his mind from an American liberal who loves freedom and democracy to the opposite, a nazi who justifies the progroms and all the nazi activities.
We can find in the letters posted by Martin some of the arguments that nazis said to justify their attitude and we can feel how many germans were involved in that movement.
At the begining, in the first letters Martin tells Max about the hard times german people were living after the WWI, the poverty, the high unemployment, etc. And he says that the situation needs to be changed but he doubts about the direction and he says that the direction is bad.
Some time after he becomes member of the nazi party becuase of his own interest, then he will finally justify all the nazi crimes.
Max will also change from a friend who tries to underestand Martin’s attitude (because of the social and political frame where Martin and his family have to live) to a position in which he hates Martin up to a point he wants to kill Martin, (because Martin didn’t help Griselle when she was wanted by the stormtroops, and they killed her)
The writer shows us how a letter can be used as an arm to kill, how people changes when they taste their owm medicine and how much suffering was driven by the nazi moviment.
When I read the book for first time I remmenbered the famous poem from Bertolt Brecht “ First they came for...”
Vicent L1
franvifran@gmail.com
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