Comparing The Guilt Of Max Vandenburg And Michael Holzapfel

Guilt is like the glue that holds up human civilization. It is the one thing that makes humans abide by the laws and it is the one thing that stops the spread of chaos around the world. Our guilt is our conscience. A society without guilt, is like a society without order because it is the one thing that makes us human. Max Vandenburg and Michael Holtzapfel are two characters that have suffered a great deal of guilt and for both of them, it is a result of Nazi Germany, but they deal with their guilt through distractions and causing themselves pain and that guilt makes Max and Michael interact with people as if they are living in fear of the past and the present. The guilt of Max Vandenburg and Michael Holzapfel’s is for both of them, caused

Max Vandenburg and Michael Holtzapfel deal with their guilt through distractions and hurting themselves physically. One way Max distracts himself from the guilt is by daydreaming about fighting the person that influenced it, Hitler. In deaths description of the fights, “Adolf finished him… In the basement of 33 Himmel street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation.” (p. 254) I think that this shows that Max is really fighting mainly his guilt, and all of the other bad things that happen to him and that in his battle, he loses. Another example of Max distracting himself from everything is when he says to Liesel, “Often I wish this would all be over Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.” (p. 313) I think that this shows how Max uses Liesel as a distraction and the happiness she brings him, to take away from all of the things he is feeling responsible for. Michael used his pain and his suffering to help him deal with the guilt of surviving and it is obvious when he was in the basement and his eyes, “beat furiously in their sockets as he squeezed his injured hand and the blood rose through the bandage” (p. 487). I think that he is causing himself this pain makes him feel like he is making up for the fact that he didn’t die and he feels that it will make up for it being his brother on the death bed and not him. In the end, we all need to deal with our emotions but the most difficult emotion to come face to face with is guilt and Michael and Max are two very good examples of how we may never get over it, but we may move