Children and Fire: The Effect of Ethnocentrism

Ursula Hegi's thought provoking novel Children and Fire provides the reader with a fictional yet stark sense of the propaganda effects during Hitler's tyranny.  The book starts by briefly detailing the life of our brave heroine,  given the name of Thekla Jansen, a well meaning and seemingly naive German citizen.

Initially Hegi places the us, squarely in the daily life of Thekla during Hitler's rule in a small fictional town in Germany named Bergdorf.  Thekla is intellectually very gifted, being a teacher of young boys, but her morals soon come into question.  The majority of this novel is based on the day of the one year anniversary of the burning of Reichstag, the parliament building located in Berlin.  This burning was blamed on the Communists, though throughout the book several characters question the validity of that assertion.  This anniversary, February 27, 1934, is a school day in which Thekla must deal with all of the questions of her adolescent students, some of which have some unsavory answers she might wish to avoid.

Thekla inherits her rag tag group of schoolboys from her favorite teacher and mentor who was dismissed due to the Nazi regime.  The author places Thekla in some challenging situations in which she must try and teach the boys while still learning how to maintain her own moral integrity.  At times the book comes across as heavy handed with the message, but seeing how important the message is, it is understandable that moments like that are bound to occur.

Thekla openly challenges traditional morals of the time, considering her personal relationships are not in line with the church.  Later, however, she conforms to the expectations of the time, encouraging her boys to join the Hitler Jugen and conform to a political party in great ethical question for their own good.  Unintentionally, Thekla is becoming part of the Nazi machine encouraging the training of new young Nazis getting swept up in the ethnocentrism so prevalent during the time.  Thekla even goes so far as to start to make her family genealogy, soon to be required by the government when she makes her life changing discovery, she's a illegitimate child and worse, a JEW.

Thekla is an interesting heroine for many reasons, not the least of which being the fact that she is far from perfect.  Thekla remains relatable, even when her decisions make you question her integrity.  To make a perfect protagonist would have made an impossible person, destroying the legitimacy of this thought provoking work.  Thekla remains morally gray throughout much of the book, justifying her no doubt wrong or at the very least questionable actions.  Instead of taking responsibility for her mistakes and wrongdoings, she, like many of us, would prefer to scapegoat anything in sight from politics down to society.

From a social standpoint another excellent point is highlighted by the author, the ethnocentrism that was so highly promoted in that time and area.  Thekla tries to justify the obvious racism that is happening, and ultimately ends up at least acting more ethnocentric and racist than she did in the beginning.  While in the end, while trying to prove her Aryan superiority and submit her family lineage to the government, she finds out that she is the very people she has been singling out.  This fact rocks our heroine to the very foundation, causing her to question her position in her daily life, and in the political and social spheres.

An interesting question this poses is our heroines true moral compass.  If she was to have continued believing that she was a rightful descendant of the Aryan nation would she have ever questioned her ways?  Would she have continued to follow down the path that was slowly and surely turning her into at the very least a Nazi apathatic, if not a supporter?  It is impossible to know considering this is solely fictional, but it proves the point at how surely and slowly the propaganda effected regular and 'good' people in the end.  Was she truly a good person?  Perhaps, or perhaps not, I suppose that is up to the individual to decide.

The content of this book was undoubtedly very informative for a fictional novel, the method by which this was conveyed, however, could have been improved.  The conversation felt realistic, but the jumping around from place to place left me feeling more confused and disoriented, losing my desire to continue reading.  This was my only critique for this otherwise very well done novel.

I take the good with the bad and give this novel a strong thumbs up.  While the characters and hometown may have been fictional, the author made us feel as if we had been transported to twentieth century Germany under Nazi regime.  The book allows for an interesting read with a deeper message and much to analyze. If nothing else, this read can help people to remember that less than a century ago thousands of people were capable of such atrocities.  These people didn't all start out saying they would be haters and evildoers, but ultimately it is easy for group psychology and propaganda to take over. All in all, an informative and worthwhile read that I hope many more people can enjoy and learn from.