Fatherland

“[March] was a connoisseur of this particular rain. He knew the taste of it, the smell of it. It was Baltic rain from the north, cold and sea-scented, tangy with salt. For an instant he was back twenty years, in the conning tower of a U-boat, slipping out of Wilhelmshaven, lights doused, into the darkness.”

The opening lines of the text establish the dreary atmosphere through the reference to the continuous rain. March’s connection to his time in World War II creates the idea of perpetuity, as if the rain hasn’t stopped in years. This evokes the feeling that this alternative Berlin never truly escaped the war, trapping its citizens in a perpetually dismal state.

“It was all so normal. Later, that was what would strike him most. It was like having an accident: before it, nothing out of the ordinary; then, the moment; and after it, a world that was changed forever.”

The limited third-person perspective focuses on March throughout the novel. His thoughts in retrospect about the incident reflect on the monumentality of finding Buhler’s body. His words foreshadow the danger of this case and its devastating impact on March.

“March, on the other hand, was divorced and lived alone. He had set aside the afternoon to spend with his son. But the long hours of the morning stretched ahead, a blank. The way he felt, it would be good to have something routine to distract him.”

This passage emphasizes March’s isolation: His job as an investigator has taken over his life, replacing even his wife and son. His thought that he needs “something routine to distract him” is ironic. The “routine” thing that he refers to is death (in this case, the body in the lake), highlighting how commonplace crime and murder are in both his life and this version of Berlin.