The window theater

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The short story The Window Theater by Ilse Aichinger from 1949 appeared in 1953 in the collection Der Gefesselte. Narratives . She depicts a lonely woman who is determined to be sensational, who watches an old man in a window across from her apartment who, from her point of view , tries to make contact with her through funny gestures and small demonstrations. After initial interest, she suddenly changes her attitude and calls the police. When she and the officers break into the old man's apartment, she discovers that the “theater performance” was aimed at a little boy who moved into the supposedly empty apartment above her with his parents.

Text and interpretation

Text features

The events are shown chronologically. It is mainly told from the perspective of the woman. Smaller authoritative comments by the narrator mainly serve to characterize the woman: “The woman had the stare of curious people who are insatiable. Nobody had done her the favor of being knocked down in front of her house. ”The events are largely presented as an uncommented narrative report, partly loosened up by internal monologues and experienced speech .

The text shows the characteristics of the genre short story , such as the abrupt beginning without introducing the names of the people (“The woman leaned on the window ...”) and the open, pointed end, the discussion of an everyday situation also fits the genre. Accordingly, it has also been included in a short story anthology of the yellow Reclam ribbons.

The characters are metaphorically arranged in a kind of theater. The old man's window represents the stage, the woman's apartment the auditorium. Due to the ignorance of the second “box”, the window from which the little boy is watching, the woman refers to the “performance” alone, interpreting it as an attempted contact.

interpretation

The woman embodies a lonely person full of resentment : “The woman had the stare of curious people who are insatiable. Nobody had done her a favor by being knocked down in front of her house. "

The opposite pole to her are the little boy and the old man, who maintain a humorous and forgotten communication. The other elements of the text are arranged around these contrasts, on the woman's side, for example, the sensational crowd that forms after the arrival of the police car, or the police themselves who forcibly break into the apartment. The aggressiveness of the intrusion and the inappropriateness of their behavior are revealed to be misguided in the face of the little boy's cheerfulness:

“He jumped and waved over and crowed with cheers. He laughed, ran his hand over his face, got serious and seemed to hold the laugh in his palm for a second. Then he threw it in the face of the guards with all his might. “You can clearly see that the woman is afraid for the man, but the boy enjoys the man's tricks and in no way thinks about the dangers to which the man exposes himself.

The clear reference to the social reality of lack of humor, sensationalism and orderliness contrasts the negative characters with the communicative possibilities of play and theater. The design of the apartments reflects these contrasts. The old man's window is brightly lit even before it gets dark, and the woman from the old man's apartment looks "into her own dark window". The loneliness of the woman also corresponds to the distance between her apartment and life on the street, which she observes from the window: “Besides, she lived on the penultimate floor, the street was too deep down. The noise only rushed up slightly. Everything was too deep down. "

In addition to the boy's cheerful childlike nature, the old man represents the positive outsider who initially attracts the woman unintentionally. The call for the police only seems possible and necessary to the woman when she discovers the old person's social weakness, the poverty . “This gave her so long pleasure that all of a sudden all she saw was his legs in thin, patched velvet pants sticking out into the air. He was upside down. When his face reappeared flushed, heated and friendly, she had already called the police. "

imagery

Laughter has a special metaphorical meaning in the short story. In two places it is told how at first the old man seems to be holding the laugh in his cupped hand and then throwing it over to the woman, then the child to the police. Laughter here stands for the natural, easy-going happiness and humor of a child and an old man in contrast to the lack of humor in their surroundings. Both get serious before throwing the laughter over because they know that the other side, the old woman, then the police, lacks that same sense of humor.

output

  • Ilse Aichinger: The tied up . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-11042-4 (= Fischer-Taschenbuch , Volume 11042, from: Ilse Aichinger: Werke , Volume 2: Erzählungen 1, 1948–1952 ).

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