Essay Four – Historical non-fiction

INTRODUCTION

Funder’s novel undoubtedly constitutes both a thorough exploration of the humanity of the vessels of the Stasi regime, as well as the complexity and depth of the population they terrorised, whose stories were largely as yet untold.¹ Anna Funder’s historical non-fiction novel Stasiland, utilises a braided structure imbued with flashbacks² from the lives of inhabitants of the Stasi regime in East Berlin, to tell their stories. Funder establishing her intent to de-mystify public conceptions surrounding the placation of citizens living under the regime, identifying exceptions to this idea. This mission of revelation extends to notions of good and evil which she both concedes to but also qualifies with nuanced perspectives, giving context to the inhumanity of the Stasi. Thus, Funder reveals a deeper, more human regime whose various victims and proponents are given a voice, their experiences and actions explained.

1. When writing on a single text, try to engage with its core message as soon as possible, as this instantly signals that your essay will probably be a high-range piece with a solid understanding of what the text means.
2. You can include broad structural analysis in your introduction to establish a firm premise for the rest of your analysis.  

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The perceived inhumanity of the Stasi regime as Funder found it a decade later, arose from people’s misguided ideas about the truth of its dissidents, which Funder sought to re-align. She establishes the nature of this misconception using the dialogue of her boss at the media company she was working for, Scheller, who describes GDR citizens as³ “just a bunch of downtrodden whingers, with a couple of mild-mannered civil rights activists among them, and only a couple at that.” His scathing tone and colloquial language⁴ in this scene, evidences the disdain felt towards citizens who experienced the Stasi regime, the false evidence upon which such attitudes had developed, Funder sought to rectify. The round character of Miriam, a protagonist whose presence recurs repeatedly throughout the book,⁵ presents a contradiction to Scheller’s assumption,⁶ telling Funder about her dissidence in a voice which “is a combination of pride in how she became such a fiend, and disbelief that this country created enemies of its own children.” The auditory image imbued with a paradoxical metaphor and emotive language where children could be enemies of their parents, refutes Scheller’s attitude with an authentic representation of dissidence in the regime.

3. Make sure you introduce quotes properly so they flow with the rest of your analysis. Don’t leave quote unincorporated, as this makes your essay somewhat harder for assessors to read, and ultimately just shows that you aren’t confident enough to make the quotes fit your sentences.

4. Throughout all of these essays, you may notice that I often use more than one technique or metalanguage term to comment on a quote. Though not a formal requirement, this is a very effective way to enhance your analysis, provided you can find suitable structural devices.

5. Here, I’ve just quickly clarified the meaning of a ‘round character’ for the marker, in case this isn’t a term they are very familiar with.

6. Staging interactions between characters like this can give a nice fluidity to your argument, as well as demonstrate your holistic grasp of the text.

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Funder’s exploration of the conventional dichotomy of good and evil, is expanded and humanised as she investigates the manifestations and motivations of the men constituting the Stasi. In her interview with Herr von Schnitzler, a GDR propaganda broadcaster, she notes his insistence that “there was Erich Mielke at the top, a living example of the most humane human being”, reflecting herself that Mielke “was too fierce and feared to be referred to with anything like affection.” Von Schnitzler’s rapturous tone strongly juxtaposes that of Funder,⁷ whose indignation and disbelief is strongly emphasised by her use of alliteration to highlight “fierce” and “feared.”⁸ Thus, the reader is privy to her subjectivity as a narrator and investigator, observing with abhorrence alongside her, the undisguised admiration for proponents of evil which motivated instruments of the Stasi regime.⁹ Such motivations, however, are not merely dismissed; her interviews with Koch serve as explorations of humanity, during which she reflects that “it was a universe in a vacuum, complete with its own self-created hells and heavens, its punishments and redemptions meted out right here on earth.” By using biblical allusions as a metaphor for Stasiland, she provides readers with an insight into the rigidity of the Stasi’s own conceptions of good and evil through the accumulation of dichotomous antitheses.¹⁰ Readers are called upon to empathise with the notion that current conceptions of good and evil, while largely the inverse of those of the Stasi, are nonetheless held with the same degree of conviction under whose influence these people operated. Thus the “inhumanity” or immorality of the regime, is given depth and complexity so that audiences may understand the ferocity of moral conviction which drove its proponents in a deeply human way.

7. I’m linking lots of different characters together here, and in doing so, drawing out ideas that would not be possible by only analysing single characters in isolation in each paragraph.

8. Any time you are analysing a very specific technique like alliteration or plosivity, I’d recommend pulling apart the particular words and phrases so that you can prove to your marker you know exactly what you’re talking about! More precision means more marks!

9. Exploring the effect of narrative voice is just as important as identifying it!

10. Again, I have fused two different techniques here to craft a more sophisticated point of analysis.  

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Despite attempting to understand such motivations, Funder nonetheless retains a strong sense of justice which was undermined by the Stasi both in their own enforcement during the regime, as well as in their reception of it afterwards. After outlining the suspicious circumstances of Charlie’s death,¹¹ Funder explains that “the connection of the Party, the Stasi and the law went from the ground up: the Stasi, in consultation with the school principles, recruited obedient students with an appropriately loyal attitude for the study of law.” Using the visual imagery of the idiom “from the ground up,” we are given to understand the extent of the Stasi’s control of law and order, and thus the inability for citizens such as Miriam, to achieve justice through external oversight¹² – the lack of justice is humanised for audiences by its application to Miriam’s suffering as a result of Charlie’s mysterious death. . Funder goes on in her interviews with Herr Bock, to ascertain that justice was further skirted¹³ in the treatment of the Stasi and their agents after the instatement of a capitalist system, saying of the former Stasi informer, “Terrific. Here he is once more getting the trust of his people and selling them cheap.” The use of sarcasm and the colloquialism “selling them cheap” again reinforces the subjective emotivity of Funder as a narrator,¹⁴ as she guides readers to share in her disdain for this omission in justice against the perpetrators of the Stasi regime. The strong focus on notions of crime, punishment and justice throughout the book may be attributable to Funder’s background as a lawyer, providing her with with conviction to humanise both the victims and the profiteers of injustice.

11. Here, the context of the quote is absolutely necessary for the marker to understand what you’re talking about. Always explain where your evidence fits in the text to avoid confusion.

12. This brings the discussion back to the context.

13. Always demonstrate a relationship between different parts of the same theme even if the connections seem abstract.

14. As with memoirs, there is value in separating the significance of the character or narrator (in this case, Anna) from the author (in this case, Funder).

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The importance of storytelling in Funder’s quest to engender a deep empathy for those deprived of their individuality, autonomy and humanity under the Stasi regime, is encapsulated in the character of Julia.¹⁵ At first sight, Julia is represented as a flat character, the eccentric neighbour who “regards fixed appointments as intolerable restraints on her freedom.” The high modality with which Julia’s quirk is encapsulated creates a mocking tone which foreshadows the sombre explanation to come. As Julia talks to Funder later in the book, she attributes this tendency to the legacy of “the sort of structures which keep you in” that she experienced such as ‘Being trapped by the Wall before, and then working in jobs which were way under my capacities and where I had no choice’. The intratextual references to stories previously revealed to readers¹⁶ develop a sense of intimacy and understanding between Julia and the audience, culminating in a heightened horror and sympathy when she talks about her rape which she understates as “the last straw”, demonstrating the repression of this memory in her mind. Julia’s morphing from a flat character to a dynamic character in the progression of Funder’s novel, evokes a strong sense of the innumerable astonishing stories withheld by former citizens of the GDR, overturning the diminutive typecasting which constituted the opinions of West Berliners such as her boss, Scheller.¹⁷

15. You do not have to have a homogeneous essay in terms of structure; a character-based paragraph can easily fit into an essay largely based on themes.

16. Remember to make consistent references to the author as well as the audience throughout your body paragraphs.

17. This is where preparation comes in handy – I framed the essay at the beginning with a reference to Scheller as encapsulating the misrepresentation of East Berlin, so now I reference him again to demonstrate Funder’s successful undermining of his viewpoint.

CONCLUSION

Funder’s Stasiland unravels the truth behind the experiences of a regime whose cruelty, and subsequent generalised constructions might render it “inhuman”. Funder explores the difficulties of distilling reality from such a convoluted history, the meaning of moral dichotomy from varying perspectives and the ubiquity of misplaced justice as a result, further emphatically asserting the importance of storytelling and characterisation to achieve these means. Readers are thus called upon in her navigation of these themes, to look beyond the generalisations which are prone to define history, and to empathise with complexity and diversity in their perceptions of the innate humanity imbued in the Stasi regime.¹⁸