Movies and Films
This is the forum for Movie and Film discussions. Again, our topic is naval warfare in WWII for the most part.
Re: Das Boot - Thomsen's Character - Book and Film
Posted by:
Meg Rosenfeld
()
Date: March 07, 2007 02:30AM
Hello Jean-Noël,
I think someone could go through the entire first chapter of Das Boot trying to match up fictional characters with real ones, and come away still confused. The same may be true of the crew-members, although there seems to be somewhat more of a one-to-one correlation there. After all, as you say, it IS fiction and the author can do what he wants with his creations--including killing them off with a British air raid at the end! I was absolutely delighted when I learned that this disastrous ending was, indeed, fiction and that almost all of those guys had survived the war. It's easy to understand why he wrote that ending, since he was hammering the message into the readers' minds about how cruel and senseless the U-Boot war had been (and, especially, how cruel and senseless were those invulnerable higher-ups who commanded the whole operation) and it wouldn't have been the same book if they'd all come safely into port and had a hot bath followed by a lovely Christmas dinner.
On the other hand, some characters, such as der Alte and der Leitende, are exact portraits of the originals. But then again, he could do whatever he wanted with his own work.
Alles Gute/bonjour,
Meg
I think someone could go through the entire first chapter of Das Boot trying to match up fictional characters with real ones, and come away still confused. The same may be true of the crew-members, although there seems to be somewhat more of a one-to-one correlation there. After all, as you say, it IS fiction and the author can do what he wants with his creations--including killing them off with a British air raid at the end! I was absolutely delighted when I learned that this disastrous ending was, indeed, fiction and that almost all of those guys had survived the war. It's easy to understand why he wrote that ending, since he was hammering the message into the readers' minds about how cruel and senseless the U-Boot war had been (and, especially, how cruel and senseless were those invulnerable higher-ups who commanded the whole operation) and it wouldn't have been the same book if they'd all come safely into port and had a hot bath followed by a lovely Christmas dinner.
On the other hand, some characters, such as der Alte and der Leitende, are exact portraits of the originals. But then again, he could do whatever he wanted with his own work.
Alles Gute/bonjour,
Meg