Discussion Questions for “Good Bye, Lenin” 1. What scene does the title of Becker’s film come from? What camera angles does he use in this scene? What is the effect on Christiane, Alex’s mother? The helicopter carrying Lenin’s statue away is the scene the title is referring to. Camera angles are kept high from below Christiane’s eye line. It allows the viewer to feel as if they are looking up and simultaneously allowing the image of Christiane’s face. She appears bewildered in this scene. Confused about what is happening. 2. One of the best known lines from Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott is “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” Give a couple of examples of how this plays out in Alex’s scheme to keep his mother unaware of the changes in her world. All stemming from the beginning lie regarding the truth about the state of the GDR, Alex continuously has to raise the ante. Alex has to fabricate the news from the …show more content…
How does Becker use the Sandmännchen to connect Alex’s past with the present? When Alex goes to seek out and inform his father about Christiane’s deteriorating health, his half-siblings are watching the show. The Sandmännchen was a common tie between East and West Berlin (although two different productions between the two.) 11. Do you think the movie had a “happy ending?” Did his mother understand before she died what had happened to the DDR? I think his mother absolutely understood what happened by her death. It was an odd ending. Happy in the sense that Christiane died knowing how much her children loved her and even had a reunion with her husband. Strange when you consider everything that occurred and Alex never directly telling her the truth. The only way Christiane could get to the truth was through the conversations with Lara and Christiane’s husband combined with her moments that she had peering through the veil Alex was so desperately trying to maintain. 12. What was your favorite scene in the movie?
...erson of increasingly reputable morals. Now Alex wants to break away from the group and adopts more the philosophy that “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule” (Neitzsche 90).
That sends her off on a wild goose chase to find out who killed her, and many other smaller conflicts result around this. Another conflict is when Alexi is sent back to Moscow by her father because that was one of Grace’s friend who helped her discover and find the clues leading up to Grace finding out the person who killed her mother.
During the 19th century, Russia was experiencing a series of changes with its entire nation and society overall. The government was trying to adapt themselves to them at the same time. It was not an easy time period for Russia whatsoever. Vladimir Lenin helped change this.
12. If you were the author, would you have ended the story in a different way? Why? How so?
He creates one final broadcast that ‘describes German unification as a collective show of support for socialism rather than capitalism’ (Doughty, 38). Alex realizes that the GDR he created for his mother is the one he wished to have. Through this realization Alex is able to let go of the space he has created for himself to protect his identity because he understands that letting for of this state and moving forward does not mean he has to forget everything in his past. He now understands that he can maintain a link to his personal past, and his mother, but is still able to move forward in a unified Germany.
This is also often the next step after a severe loss in a family, evolving from the ‘recovery period.’ In the middle of the book, Alex becomes aware of his larger and larger isolation from the rest of his family. From this, he seems to try to change his actions; becoming less agitated and irate, but changing to just becoming focused on solving Caroline’s murder. “It didn’t take long for Tony Nicholson to start talking a blue streak about the club and the blackmail scheme after that. I’d seen it so many times before, the way suspects will start competing with each other once they sense the ground is shifting. To hear him tell it, Mara Kelly had set up the entire back end: Asian underground banking, public key cryptography -- everything they needed to stay out of reach for as long as they had.” (page 210) Alex begins to completely forget about ‘taking out his rage’ or ‘getting revenge’ to just solving his niece’s case and giving the rest of his family some closure. To achieve this, however, Alex slowly begins to seek more and more help from the rest of his family. “You’re going to be just fine, she had said to me. Maybe not quite the same, but still, just fine. You’re a police officer. She was right, of
There are many people who have lived through and within the Bolshevik Revolution, so there are a multitudinous variety of perspectives, thoughts, and insights about the revolution. The Bolshevik Revolution is known for many things; some say that the revolution helped women become free of control, and others proclaim that it did nothing but continue to hold women captive of their desired rights. The Bolshevik Revolution article states the side of a history professor Richard Stites, who argues yes the revolution benefited the women whilst the other side is declared no the revolution did no justice for women at all, which was argued by a Russian scholar, Lesly A. Rimmel. The opposing arguments both create an effective view on the revolution, and
In the book Scribbler of Dreams by Mary E. Pearson, Becky quotes an 1808 poem. This poem is titled Marmion by Walter Scott. Becky quotes the line, “Oh what a tangled web we weave…” The line that follows is, “When first we practice to deceive.” Deception in this novel is like a tangled web.
The only people in the story whose fates are not revealed beforehand are Ayah, the mother, and Chato, the father. The ending does end on an ominous tone, however, and their fates are hinted subtly, but not absolutely. What do you think happened to the couple at the end? What hints in the narrative make you think that
my opinion I think too much of the plot and the ending was give away.
To begin, Alex is one out of the four characters that reveals self-awareness broadly. Alex begins by stating, “What’s it going to be then, eh” (Burgess 1). The use of this quote explains to the reader that Alex is not only self-aware of himself, but he is careless, and he is an outlaw. Another quote that Alex states throughout the novel is, “O my brothers” (Burgess 5). “O my brothers” reve...
On the whole, does Goodbye, Lenin paint a positive or negative picture of life in communist East Germany?
8. My initials responses was shock. It was shocking not gruesome how they tide the birth and the suicide into a story at the same time. The death overshadows the birth of the child being born in my eyes.
The book also discussed the family life of Alex which went up and down because his job took most of time and kept him away from them.
cries and had to go tell jacks wife that he is dead. They both knew Jack was going to die but