Quotes from the Assault to deep inside the tunnel of the past

Theme: deep inside the tunnel of the past (avoidance) 

• " I don't know yet. Pilot, perhaps."(45)( what do you want to be?) 
• " For Anton, who was still too young to absorb the past, each new event erased the preceding one from awareness and buried it in his subconscious." (47)
• "... as if his tears had washed away his memories." (52)
• "he had no desire to know" (57) 
• "...he wanted to say good-bye once and for all- now, immediately." (61)
• "He only cared about the place, not the people. ... he wanted to run away." (64)
• "...Now something was expected from him, a question from long ago. His should be the opening move... but he had no desire to begin. " (67)
• "...they could go to hell with their monument, for all you cared." ( 75) 
• "With averted face he saw the glass break into large pieces that landed in splinters in the iron lid of the stove.." (93)
• “deep inside the tunnel of the past” (108)
• "there is nothing to discuss, really. What happened, ahppend. It doesn't bother me, believe me." (110) 
• "A victim? of course... yet at the same time, he felt as it had all happened to someone else." (112)  
• "No idea. Never wondered about it." (117) 
• “Care, care... It can’t be changed now, even if I understood it” (117)
• “Not until it ended, and with it every single memory… a blue pillar of smoke…from the ashtray…”(146)
• " Therefore such a person has his face turned toward void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory."/ what do we still have behind us?  (151)
• "...but he knew if he once began taking tranquilizers he would never top."(156) 
• " Everyone did what he did, and not anything else." (160) 

Reflection pg 106-118

This excerpt of the book “The Assault” focuses on various themes, which ties into the motifs and symbols.  Yet one theme is the main block around which everything else is build up on: FATE, to this the motif of light and stones and the themes AVOIDANCE and UNDERSTANDING are involve as well.

Anton’s live is made up of fate. Everything happens to be a coincidence, which leads him back to his dark past. This apparently was also all a coincidence, “one can always help fate along a bit”(114), and this shows that the assault was never meant to end in a way that his family got murdered. There happened more to the assault, which was beyond the control of the family Steenwijk.

In these 13 pages, Anton meets the guy who has shot Ploeg at the funeral of a resistance member. Both have a different understanding of the whole scenario, where as Anton has a rather limited knowledge of the particular night. “Care, care... It can’t be changed now, even if I understood it” (117), this shows how Anton has been avoiding his past and never really tried to understand. Through fate he got back to his and is now in a conversation with the murderer of Ploeg (also called Gijs), which leads to a conclusion that there is more to the assault than just the assault.

The mood of the conversation or flow is a couple of times reflected through light. Right at the beginning, when Anton by accident follows a conversation, he jumps right back  “deep inside the tunnel of the past” (108). The tunnel symbolizing darkness, the darkness he is trying to avoid and barely knows about.  But then again this is the light of the darkness- for Anton it seems like a fairy tale (110) meeting the man with whom it all began, he wants to know what happened, because now he has the chance to find out more. Still he tries to avoid.

Another scene where light is strongly emphasized is when Gijs is justifying himself, but doesn’t quite to whom. “…Who exists? The dead. The friends who have died.”(112) Here a small cloud covers the sun-darkness. “The flowers of the new grave look bleached”(112), the grave symbolizing stones, which therefore emblematizes memory, the memory of the murdered family with all its regret and sadness. Who’s death they are trying to understand years later, emphasized by the reoccurrence of light from one moment to another.

All in all it’s a sunny day, where Anton and Gijs are facing the mystery that there’s more to the assault. Even though Anton “never wondered about it” (117) and always tried to avoid, Gijs is desperate to find out.

“…there was more to it. Something happened there.” (118) 

PAGE 26/27

Annotation

Outline

• Intro
• Where: at Steenwijk's house
• Characters: Anton, Mother, Father, Germans
• Motif: light 
• structure
• Body 1: 
• Context : 
• Before: normal life; children do homework, mother housewife, father worker and teacher of Peter
• After: Anton gets taken away 
• Now: right after the assault, when the Germans enter the house of the Steenwijk's
• Body 2: 
• Motif: light
• germans help and advantage : flashlights
• give the Germans power 
• therefore in contrast to situation before 
• Body 3: 
• Contrast 
• deadly silence - busyness 
• Germans creating busyness: make feel special 
• before everything calm- rather silent 
• Body 4: 
• Motif : light 
• darkness : bad things happen 
• connection: soldier and flashlights
Body 5: 
• Character Father:
• head of family 
• tries to keep control 
• in juxtaposition with the following
• Body 6: 
• the Germans 
• spreading horror 
• creating worries
• tearing apart 
• Body 7: 
• Anton: 
• scared
• thoughtful 
• doubting 
• caring 
• thoughts running through his head
• Body 8: 
• Foreshadowing 
• " Everything went at a terrible clip. "
• comparison, change in paste 

• Body 9: 
• Overall structure 
• short dialogue 
• lots of description - detailed discription of what is happening ( listing) 
• Body 10: 
• syntax + diction 
• Conclusion: 
• summery