59 pages • 1-hour read
The German Wife
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Symbols & Motifs
Photographs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, mental illness, and religious discrimination.
The photographs of Georg, Laura, and Mayim that Sofie keeps close to her symbolize what she’s lost in the war, and they simultaneously serve as a motif that highlights The Impact of War on Family. The photos are introduced when Sofie arrives in Huntsville, and she looks at them to remember her children and dear friend, all of whom are lost to her at that point. The photo of Mayim, in particular, represents the life that Sofie had before the war, when she and Mayim shared a positive view of the future. Henry steals the photos, which emphasizes the personal nature of his targeting of Sofie:
[T]he objects taken were so personal, and those images had no value to anyone other than me. I wondered if whoever took them […] had any idea what they’d really stolen in taking the simple stack of paper that represented my last mementos of Adele and Georg and even Laura, and of course, Mayim (361).
When Lizzie finds the photos, she sees Sofie in a new light and has to recognize Henry’s criminal behavior: “[A]s I stared down at the final [photo], I felt a pinch in my chest. An even younger Sofie Rhodes, this time with another young woman beaming at the camera, a Star of David pendant hanging from her necklace” (380-81). The photo leads the police to Henry and confirms Sofie’s story. Perhaps most poignantly, the same photo of Mayim is what allows Sofie to cope with her grief after Georg’s death: “I gently tore open the seal, and my heart started to pound as I saw the black-and-white image inside. It was me and Mayim, arms around one another, suitcases by our ankles, beaming at my nanny the morning we were leaving for finishing school” (410). Remembering Mayim reminds Sofie of that sense of future possibility, foreshadowing Sofie’s rediscovery of Mayim at the end of the novel. The photographs keep Sofie’s family whole, even as the war kills and steals her loved ones. The photographs also link the Rhodes and Miller families, allowing Henry to heal and Lizzie and Sofie to see familiarity across cultural lines.
“Sometimes It’s the Trees That Bend With the Wind”
Adele tells Sofie when Mayim leaves that sometimes the only trees that survive a storm are the trees that bend to the wind. This same phrase recurs multiple times throughout the novel as a motif pointing to The Difference Between Intentions and Actions. Ironically, Adele herself does not follow this advice. She repeatedly risks her life to funnel money to Jewish families seeking to escape Nazi persecution, and she ultimately loses her life in this effort. In this, she embodies the advice that Sofie gives to Lizzie near the end of the book: “Be true to your values, whatever the consequences” (415). This advice is the opposite of the advice to bend with the wind, and Sofie offers it in a spirit of contrition. By this point, her experience has taught her that bending to the will of those in power only encourages them to push harder and demand more. That Adele is the one who advises Sofie to bend with the wind suggests The Impact of War on Family: Adele is willing to sacrifice her own life to be true to her values, but she is not willing to see her family killed.
The Cake
The cake that Sofie brings as a peace offering to Lizzie symbolizes the conflict between the families and the difficulty in creating reconciliation. Sofie recognizes that the disagreement at the picnic could cause far-reaching problems for Jürgen at work and Sofie in the community. However, when she arrives at the house, Henry takes the cake and throws it at the porch post:
I cried out, automatically covering my face as he threw the cake, plate and all, into a brick pillar on the front porch, right behind my head. Shards of ceramic and dense cake and sticky lemon frosting rained down the back of my dress. I turned and ran toward my car. If he gave chase, I was done. He was easily twice my size, and so angry (279).
The act of violence triggers Jürgen to speak to Calvin, and Lizzie rejects the possibility of any such thing. However, later, as she’s leaving, she finds shards of plate, and “when [she] check[s] through the trash can, [she] f[inds] one unholy mess of cake and plate and dirt, wrapped in newspaper” (293). This is evidence that Sofie has been telling the truth and that Henry’s behavior is becoming unpredictable and dangerous. The cake is an attempt to apologize and make up for past crimes real and imagined. Instead, it becomes symbolic of the barriers to reconciliation and understanding.
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