HINTS
Either of these exercises will
achieve the goal of a longer writing experience, a key
function of Phase 5. One the other hand, Exercise A,
with its focus on how people express their values and
behaviors, stresses the culture and connections
standards rather than comparison and
communities. Consequently, it will probably
yield less of an interpolation of the text than will
Exercise B.
That lacuna can be addressed by
altering the interviewer's role, however. If the
interviewer is, for example, a 1990s American journalist
undertaking an historical retrospective, or possibly a
"woman from Mars" trying to understand humanoid behavior,
questions would be asked that contrast the culture of
the questioner with the person being interrogated.
Questions such as "On our planet, we stop fighting as soon
as we see we cannot win. Why did you continue to
fight?" fit the production appropriate to a goal set by the
comparison standards. Similarly, by designating
the interviewer as a person assessing how Germans spoke,
thought, and acted during this era, the task introduces a
goal for the communities standards.
Exercise B explicitly asks for a
comparison between not only between two endings, but
between responses to the dire circumstances depicted in
Borchert's work. The "Happy End" is traditionally
associated with American ideas of entertainment and,
depending on the execution of the task, the changes can
either merge with the realm of fantasy (e.g., das
Mädchen metamorphoses into Beckmann's wife; the
Colonel self-destructs when his conscience is addressed), or
they could represent "quick fixes," with plot elements based
on the reinvention of self more characteristic of American
than of German life styles (e.g., das Mädchen
divorces her first husband and marries Beckmann; the colonel
acknowledges his guilt and invites Beckmann in for
dinner).
In either framing, how the cultural messages of the text change with changes in behavior becomes the focus of analysis only if the assignment asks for such an analysis ("In conclusion, in one or more paragraphs, discuss what the differences you will introduce take away from or introduce into the picture the German postwar culture that Borchert was depicting").
Phase 5: Long-Genre Exercises: Grade 12