A berlin Diary
What was Christopher Isherwood’s aim when writing A Berlin Diary?
When writing A Berlin Diary Christopher Isherwood’s main aim was to subtly portray his thoughts of unfolding events at that time. Isherwood weaves together his observations of life in nineteen-thirties Berlin, capturing the spirit of the city and the people within it.
The main character Christopher Isherwood is painted as an observer, recording the occurrences around him in the city of Berlin. He says at the beginning of the story, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” This is ironic as Isherwood conveys to the audience the details that a camera could not reveal. He shows the atmosphere and beliefs of Pre-Nazi Germany through his descriptive inciting of the senses, “Young men calling their girls. Standing down there in the cold, they whistle up at the lighted windows of warm rooms where the beds are already turned down for the night,” this quote highlights Isherwood’s use of the sense of sound, “the extraordinary smell in this room when the stove is lighted and the window shut… a mixture of incense and stale buns,” it is evident that the previous quote was referring to one's sense of smell and finally “ Here at the writing table, I am confronted by a phalanx of metal objects - a pair of candlesticks shaped like entwined serpents, an ashtray from which emerges the head of a crocodile, a paper knife copied from a Florentine dagger, a brass dolphin holding on the end of its tail a small broken clock.” The use of the literary devices throughout the previous quotes draws the reader to gather together the physical surroundings as components of the overriding metaphor of safes. This metaphor captures the idea of a decline in wealth, security and even hope, the image of a “bankrupt middle class” that Isherwood was trying to portray of the city of Berlin in the nineteen-thirties.
Isherwood’s characters are his chief means of showing a contrast between past
When writing A Berlin Diary Christopher Isherwood’s main aim was to subtly portray his thoughts of unfolding events at that time. Isherwood weaves together his observations of life in nineteen-thirties Berlin, capturing the spirit of the city and the people within it.
The main character Christopher Isherwood is painted as an observer, recording the occurrences around him in the city of Berlin. He says at the beginning of the story, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” This is ironic as Isherwood conveys to the audience the details that a camera could not reveal. He shows the atmosphere and beliefs of Pre-Nazi Germany through his descriptive inciting of the senses, “Young men calling their girls. Standing down there in the cold, they whistle up at the lighted windows of warm rooms where the beds are already turned down for the night,” this quote highlights Isherwood’s use of the sense of sound, “the extraordinary smell in this room when the stove is lighted and the window shut… a mixture of incense and stale buns,” it is evident that the previous quote was referring to one's sense of smell and finally “ Here at the writing table, I am confronted by a phalanx of metal objects - a pair of candlesticks shaped like entwined serpents, an ashtray from which emerges the head of a crocodile, a paper knife copied from a Florentine dagger, a brass dolphin holding on the end of its tail a small broken clock.” The use of the literary devices throughout the previous quotes draws the reader to gather together the physical surroundings as components of the overriding metaphor of safes. This metaphor captures the idea of a decline in wealth, security and even hope, the image of a “bankrupt middle class” that Isherwood was trying to portray of the city of Berlin in the nineteen-thirties.
Isherwood’s characters are his chief means of showing a contrast between past