Otto and Anna Quangel are indifferent toward living under Nazi rule, but when they receive the news that their son was killed in the war, they begin a silent campaign of defiance.
There’s a phrase in the afterword that’s used to sum up the central theme of this book – ‘the banality of good.’ There’s plenty of well-known stories of resistance against oppressive powers from all eras – certainly plenty I can recount from World War Two alone, plenty of lives saved and a huge difference made. But less visible are smaller acts of resistance, many of which may have never been registered by anyone but the people performing them.
This book’s inspired by a true story, but Fallada ranges far from that initial point to develop a diverse cast of characters, all interesting in their very ordinary way. The characters are deftly sketched in plenty of shades of grey, and Fallada did a good job of showing how the characters lead their lives between and throughout the strictures of the war and the Nazi regime.
Though I knew along how things would end, I could not help but get invested to the characters, even the ne’er-do-wells (if only because of all the destruction they wrought on everyone around them!), and keep my fingers crossed for all their sakes. A little of sentimentality creeps in toward the end, but that probably can’t be helped, and indeed feels earned. There’s not a happy ending, exactly, but there is certainly catharsis.
