46 pages • 1-hour read
A Night Divided
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Symbols & Motifs
The Tunnel
The tunnel is the main symbol in the book. It is a space in which the siblings can work together to plot out a future for themselves, one that involves freedom and family reunification. It is also a liminal space, as it’s being built under the Death Strip, that span that separates West Germany from East Germany. Further, Gerta and Fritz are surprised to discover in their tunneling that their father and brother are tunneling from the other direction to reach them. They end up meeting up in the middle and journeying out together. On the literal surface of the Death Strip, there are only negative connotations; beneath, however, there is hope. The tunnel is also a space in which unlikely conspirators come together—Anna and her family, who previously resented Gerta and her relatives; and Officer Muller, who previously harassed Gerta for looking at and beyond the wall. Digging the tunnel is arduous, dangerous work full of complications but it is also a project that inspires bravery and unity.
The Garden
Though the garden is a front for the tunneling, it is a space that attracts two visitors who eventually assist Fritz and Gerta in getting to freedom. Anna visits the garden, offering to help but really spying on Gerta and her brother. In the end, Anna does not turn her friend in but instead leaves with her. The garden also attracts the attention of Officer Muller, who suspects there is something behind the garden. He also ends up leaving with Gerta and her family, much to their surprise. Gerta’s father, who sends squash seeds to Gerta under the premise of helping to grow the garden, uses the letter with the seeds as a front to send money to Gerta and Fritz. In this way, the garden works as a veil for the tunnel; if the tunnel is what can’t be seen, the garden is its camouflage.
The Family Car
Gerta’s mother uses the family’s State-owned car as a bribe late in the novel. Once the Stasi arrive at Gerta’s apartment, after Fritz has failed to show up for compulsory military service, Gerta’s mother presses the car’s keys into Viktor’s hand, offering the car in exchange for the family’s passage out of the apartment in their quest to enter West Germany. The car, then, functions as a symbol of turning the State against itself and using its property to bribe the very people meant to enforce its directives. If Viktor is largely characterized as a person who believes in the ways of East Germany, here, he breaks from that, as readers learn he plans to give the car to his mother. Viktor still places family before the State, revealing that individualism and humanism remain intact in individuals who would superficially seem to have given their allegiance to East Germany.
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