Essay: "The Wall Jumper: A Berlin Story" by Peter Schneider
It
is only by the will of the people that the governing body can function.
However, it is also by the oppression of the governing body that the people
fear rising up against their regimes. It is a struggle that our human nature
has made almost systematic; each affects the other, each relies on the other to
exist. Such a notion is seen in “The Wall Jumper: A Berlin Story” by Peter
Schneider in 1982, during the context of the cold war period, where the society
and its governing structure were often seen to be polar opposites to one
another, however, Schneider shows that it just might not be the case.
Schneider
delves into the power structures within our society and suggests that it is not
simply those whom are in power who are to blame, but also our humanistic flaws
of complacency and complicity which allow those in power to either remain in
power or accumulate more. Understanding such a notion can help us, the society,
to progress politically and to realise that our own acts, or lack thereof may
be subject to blame.
Due
to this agency of political power, the government should be reflective of the
people. Such an idea is delved into by Schneider when he comments on the people
on either side of the berlin wall with the narrator stating that they “resemble
their governments much more closely than they care to admit”. Through the use
of an omnipresent narrator and of a plural pronoun, “they”, Schneider is trying
to state that the collective people are responsible for their own government
and that it is not one individuals fault but a collective fault.
This
is emphasised with the narrator earlier stating “Nothing suggests to the
stranger that he is nearing a region where two political continents
collide" Schneider subverts the common notion that there
is a divide between politics and the people, suggesting that each is reflective
of the other by calling them ‘political continents’, suggesting that politics
has superseded culture – which brings it back to the notion that people
influence their country’s politics. This is reflective of the ballot paper:
people have the ability to vote, the agency of political power.
However,
historically and even in today’s politics, there is an understanding that such
a platform of power can itself provide influence to the people, and hence shape
the political and cultural values of a society – essentially, politics
influencing people. Schneider shows this political influence through the
division of berlin and the opposing political ideologies, with him stating that
people will stay “true to the state whose influence we no longer recognise”.
Schneider
blatantly states that the governing bodies have the power to influence the
political atmosphere and hence the people and through the use of a collective
noun, suggests that everyone human being will be effected by those in power. This
is reflective of the ballot paper, we will vote depending on the political
environment which we have been influenced by.
Schneider
puts forward the perspective that politics are only exist with the compliance
and the will of the people and that without proper scrutiny those whom oppress
or control other people will continue to accumulate power. Through the proper
understanding of his texts, we can better understand our political structures,
and hence understand that it’s not only that those in power who are to blame,
but also we ourselves, whom have put them there, are to blame as well.
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