Rolf Carlé and the Princess

701 Words2 Pages

Friendships and relationships often bring out the best in people, but they can also be painful and challenging; especially when a person has to end their relationship or friendship against their own desire. Rolf Carlé meets a young girl who causes him to recollect his miserable childhood memories. Rolf Carlé forms a special bond with this young girl because of their connection of helplessness they have both felt at one time or another, but his connection is broken when the young girl dies. Similar to Rolf Carlé, the princess from “The Lady or the Tiger” has someone whom she dearly loves forcibly taken away from her when her father finds out about their relationship. Rolf Carlé and the princess are relatable to one another because of their genuine love for someone that is taken away as their loved one is coerced into being separated from them.
Rolf Carlé is a man who went through many struggles in his childhood. He was alive during the Holocaust and Russian soldiers had led him and his family to the concentration camps to bury the prisoners that were dead of starvation. He had the image of the naked bodies piled like a mountain of firewood, which he saw as resembling fragile China, still fresh in his mind. As a child he was also beaten by his father and had an armoire that his father locked him up in for imagined misbehavior. His father was also disgraced by his own daughter because she was mentally retarded. This young girl, Katharina, spent her life hiding and since Rolf was extremely close with her he hid beneath the kitchen table with her. Rolf’s mother boarded him upon a ship heading to South America, and as Rolf looked back on his past he felt as though he had abandoned his sweet sister Katharina. When Rolf encounters Azucen...

... middle of paper ...

...s made, her love for the man was extinguished.
Though the loves that Rolf Carlé and the princess have are different types of love, they both have people they love and care become out of their reach without their control. The people they truly care for could die and it’s up to them to try to save their loved ones. These two characters are very similar in this way, and they both have to make quick decisions without enough time to think. Rolf has to try to quickly gain the materials to save someone he has a fondness towards, while the princess has to rush into the decision of giving her lover to someone else or having him killed by a tiger to ensure he wouldn’t form a new relationship. Rolf Carlé and the princess are relatable to one another because of their genuine love for someone that is taken away as their loved one is coerced into being separated from them.

Open Document