Exchanging Glances | Memory and Identity
Semansky’s stories, poems, and essays appear
regularly in literary journals. In the following essay,
Semansky analyzes the nature of memory in
Christa Wolf’s short story,‘‘Exchanging Glances.’’
On one level Christa Wolf’s autobiographical story, ‘‘Exchanging Glances,’’ is a German woman recounting the events surrounding the end of World War II. On another level, the story is about the very nature of identity itself, and the ways in which memory can both liberate and imprison the person remembering.
Wolf’s narrator tells the story of her family’s flight from the advancing Russian Army, but in the process she also tells the story of her own emotional and psychological development. In this way she is both a subject (that is, the person doing the remembering)...
[The entire page is 1364 words long]
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