When Fiction Serves the Unforgettable: A Reading of Christa Wolf’s Blickwechsel

Abstract

Christa Wolf fictionally recounts the historical events that occurred at the end of the Second World War in Germany, a moment that is also part of one of the darkest periods in the recent history of humanity. The writer not only tells her own story, through self-reflective process, but also explains that the events, the historical facts, the characters involved, the lines, the scenes, the time and even the feelings themselves, were imperfectly rescued from memory after 25 years and in this process of remembering and giving new meaning, the facts are placed from another point of view, no longer from the perspective of when they happened. By constructing this narrative, through imagery and fiction, the writer allows us readers to glimpse responsible writing, in this construction of the memory of the horrible.