The Wall Jumper

Disclaimer: To all those casual readers looking for personal updates, stories, pictures, etc...this is not it. This, however, is an intellectual response to the assigned reading “The Wall Jumper” and its relevancy to our experiences in Berlin.

“The Wall Jumper” is most like a series of short stories of individuals living in a divided Berlin in the second half of the 20th century. In a way, its almost like a modern day take on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Like Chaucer, Schneider uses his characters to paint a political and social portrait of a divided Berlin. The narrative begins as one flies into Berlin and how one must fly over the wall three times before landing at Tegal International in West Berlin. The narrator then goes on to express the lack of understanding of the city’s separation by outsiders as a traveler wished to simply take a taxi from East Berlin to the West. This, even today, is still the mindset of most visitors to Berlin. I know when I first arrived I could not tell one side from the other apart from an occasional brick line delineating the walls former location. After living here a month, that is no longer the truth. Signs of separation are now blatantly obvious from things like the architecture to stores and even the people seem slightly different. “The Wall Jumper” was a very difficult read as it was constantly bouncing all over in an erratic fashion with seemingly no motive. It was not until the end of the book did I realize that it was intentional. Through his stories, the narrator was able to express his own uncertainty in the city’s division. Some stories would preach on the stability and reliability of the East while other would speak of the luxuries and freedoms in the West. Wall or no wall, the city was divided mentally by the ideas in which their governments instilled upon them. It is this mental wall that is really the focus of the story. I believe that this wall still exist today in much of the older generations as they have been unable to break down their borders and completely accept the reunified Germany. The younger generations give some sign of hope, however. Especially now during the World Cup, the younger citizens are taking up their flags and showing their German pride, unaffected by the former division.