Katharina+Blum



__**How Katharina Blum’s character is reflected through her actions**__

In the novel ‘The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum’, written by Heinrich Boll, Katharina Blum stands a very important position. She is the main character of the novel and therefore has the most character development. Her character is reflected clearly through her actions throughout the novel.

In the beginning of the novel, she is described as an independent woman who is hardworking and successful. She is a professional housekeeper and would ‘pick up extra work …during the festive season’ and despite her poor family background (her brother ‘who is at present serving a minor jail sentence’, and her mum who is an alcoholic. It also mentions that she owns a hundred thousand marks, which is quite well-off for a housekeeper. She also seems quite proud of her career and social status she gained, bragging that she ‘”[pays her] taxes abd insurance [herself]”.’Mr Blorna and his wife (the attorney and employers of Blum) describe her as ‘being extremely sensitive, almost prudish, in sexual matters’ .The qualities that she has above – hardworking, self-reliant and prudish are all socially respectable.

However, her relationship with Ludwig Gotten seems to be out of character. On the night when Blum attended the party in at the Woltersheim apartment, ‘she had danced “exclusively and fervently” with Ludwig Gotten’ and later on proceed to take him home for the night. The next morning Blum looks ‘extremely relaxed, almost happy’ and admits that she had sex with Gotten ‘triumphantly’. She is described as ‘prudish’, and even divorced her husband because she ‘felt an insuperable aversion to [her] husband’ which she ‘[does not] which to go into details’. Her relationship with Gotten is not only out of character, it is nearly an obsession: ‘she requests that she be arrested, she would like to be where her “dear Ludwig” is’. She even abuses the generosity of Alois Straubleder and hid Ludwig in his house. This also suggests that Blum is quite naïve, as helping a criminal escape is obviously a crime.

During the arrest and interrogation, different sides of Blum’s character are reflected. When Blum is taken from her apartment to be questioned by the police, she left ‘with disheveled hair and an angry face.’ because the reporters were taking photos of her from every angle possible. This shows that she is easily flustered and does not like public attention. She also acts very distant and cold in the police station. She ‘refuses to accept coffee and a cheese sandwich from the police’. It shows that it is ‘clearly impossible for her, as Hach told it, to distinguish between personal and official relations’, which is why the policemen and Mrs Pletzer describe Blum with ‘no sense of humour’. This again suggests that she acts very distant among people who she does not know, which makes her relationship with Ludwig more out of character, since she danced ‘fervently’ with him on the first night they met.

Blum rarely shows her emotions during the interrogation. The only time when she lost control is when she found out about what the tabloid had written about her. This shows that she’s very vulnerable to personal attacks and cares about her social status, which she has earned through hard work. In order to save her ‘lost honour’, she decides to have an interview with Totges, the tabloid writer. This not only shows that she is very desperate in reviving her social status but also suggests that she is quite naïve as she thought the man who ‘destroyed her life’ would save her. This later on leads to the murder of Totges as she realizes that he does not have the intention in helping her. She decides to take justice into her own hands.

Overall the character Katharina Blum is quite clearly reflected in the novel. Different sides of Blum’s personality are shown through her actions which makes her character seem more realistic.

Helen Siu 12T2

In the novel __The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum__ or __How Violence Can Develop and Where It Can Lead__ by Heinrich Boll, there are numerous characters despite the size of the book. Yet the only character that seems to be reasonably well developed is the character of Katharina Blum, who is also seen as the main character and the catharsis of this novel. The relationship and actions of Katharina Blum evidently portrays her charcter in this novel.

Since the start of the novel, Katharina has been potrayed as a determined and self-reliant women. Born to an unfortunate family-father died when she was young, mother was an alcoholic and brother is in jail- Katharina didn't have an easy start in life. Hence, she knew perfectly that she had to stand on her own feet in order to fulfil the life she desires. She "has longed to be independent" and pursue a career more on her own. Therefore, she became a certified housekeeper with the assistance of Mr. Fehnern, a former employee. As a qualified housekeeper she was able to earn enough money to allow the purchase of her own house and volkswagen, which is quite an accomplishment for such a career. She took pride in acquiring such a sucessful career, and boasts about the ability to pay off taxes and insurence on her own. However, she seems somewhat arrogant at her acheivements as she takes too much pride in her social status. The Blornas, who Katharina has been working for, for the past four years, mentioned Katharina's prudishness and "being extremely sensitive...in sexual matters", which can be clarified by explaination of divorcing her husband as he "made advances" to her.

Nevertheless, Blum's behaviour with Ludwig Götten, whom she met at a party held by her godmother, Else Woltersheim, has spontaneity to her character. As mentioned previously, it seems rather out of charater for Katharina to have danced so passionatly with someone on their first encounter, as if she has "known Götten for two years!". It is stange that she "took him home and there very rapidly became...intimate with him", evoking the idea that she had sex with him that very evening they met. It is bizzare judging she is nicknamed "the nun"; her actions towards Götten contadicts with her prudishness, an issue raised earlier. However, one may consider her behaviour as naive for being so friendly with a stanger and helping a criminal escape, which makes her an assistance in crime. It challenges the popular belief of Katharina being a "very intelligent, cool and level-headed" person.

The arrest of Katharina from her appartment for interrogation is the first sign of the media brulalising innocent lives, "she was photographed repeatedly from the front, from behind, and from the side..." It was almost impossible for Blum to not get flustered by this unwanted attention, "she kept wanting to hide her face" but instead just made a fool of herself as all her things got tangled up. Yet, when she arrived at the police station she seemed calm and cold, contrasting with her agitated performance before. She seemed almost digusted by how things were done during the interrogation, hence, she tried to take things into her own control, shown by her refusing "to accept coffee and a cheese sandwich from the police" and wanting explain her background more precisely than required.

Overall, Katharina Blum's constant change of character through out the novel shows that she is a well rounded character, which makes her seem more realistic. Her behaviour towards Ludwig Götten contradicts with the self-reliant nature which is portrayed at the beginning of the novel. It makes her seems like a more reasonable persona and not just make belief character in a novel.

--lavinia

In Heinrich Boll’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, there are a lot of main characters presented as there are several views to the incident, from different people with several resources to that.

However, who I believe to be the most character is definitely Werner Totges, who is a media reporter of News and paparazzi that persecutes Katharina Blum, he is mostly linked to the people who strongly believe taking viewpoints from papers to be theirs believes without much reconsideration. This is not just in the story itself; it is also what Boll wanted to present how dangerous media can be, and hoping his readers to be aware of. In the book, a very minor incident shows how important Werner Totges can be an important was that, in Ch. 44 where the doctor thought that Katharina Blum was a Marxist, as he read it from the News. To me, it is a very ironical incident which the highly respected status in the society, doctors would also be targeted into News.

In this novella, I think that Werner Totges stands out most; he is a dedicated bad guy in the story. He is though simply really awful, his awfulness acts as a way for the targeted readers of the News to get what they want, as in the privacy of the people on the front cover with large prints.

What stands out the most in this novella was when Totges goes to visit Katharina Blum’s mother, she is a dying woman with cancer. After attempting the first time when he formally requested the doctors and nurses, he was rejected with the worries that the old dying lady needs more rest after a serious but successful surgery. He then dressed as a painter to get into the building; he has also noticed that there are just a few of them sparsely located within the building. From this single incident, I think that he does not only disturb other’s privacy, he as well shows no sympathy to the old dying lady, who as in the book, her daughter, Katharina shows no love to her mother, when she knows that she is dead, she did not cry much but was instead quite peaceful.

Furthermore, with what he writes on the News, Mrs. Blum might not be able to fully understand what he is talking about, he “helps” her to express herself better by twisting the whole conversation. He changes “why did it have to end like this, why does it have to come like this?” to a total different phrase. He also used the short meeting with Mrs. Blum as exclusive news on his own to address her “not surviving with the news from her daughter’s activities”. His claim is so irresponsible and biased to his own version, and only to the facts that are helpful to his story.

Prudence Kwok