The story is a romance, as the state of the world in the early twentieth century changes the lives of the two protagonists, bringing them together in strife and ultimately separating them in love.
The primary goal of Gretel, a well-born German woman, is to find love and her place in the world after World War 1, and its after-effects destroy much of what she has known and loved. Having lost her fiancé and family’s fortune, she immigrates to rural Minnesota for a new start.
William, a liveryman raised on a farm in Minnesota with a love and affinity for horses, suffers from shell shock and exposure to mustard gas from the same war. As he tries to reenter a changing world, he perceives a world full of injustice.
His goal is to learn to live with the damage he has suffered from the war and reconcile the changing world around him as his health deteriorates.
Assignment 2 THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT
Overall, the antagonist is the tendency of human nature to prefer one’s own tribe and to consider those different as inferior. This tendency is exemplified through the excessive military nationalism of Germany but is not exclusive to them.
This flaw of human nature is personified through several characters that move the plot at different stages of the story. Several antisemitic, misogynist and nationalistic villagers appear post-war and show their true colors in the pivotal year of 1923 Weimar Germany, including, to a lesser extent, Gretel’s own father and brothers. Some of these characters evolve through strife, while others don’t and are hardened in their prejudice.
William’s antagonists begin with his brother Martin, a firebrand Lutheran pastor whose fundamental Christian beliefs contradict William’s more tempered belief system and doubt. Affected physically and mentally by the war, William wrestles with his memories of horror and guilt over decisions made concerning horses under his care.
Upon returning to life in Minnesota, William begins to perceive the racism and prevalent prejudice in American society against blacks, native Americans, Jews, and a rising anti-German sentiment. These forces are personified in Martin, various members of the rural community, and William’s business partner.
Assignment 3 CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE
A Note in my Coat Pocket (my original choice)
The German Immigrant
Ordinary Sins
Assignment 4 DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES
While I worry it’s presumptuous to name All the Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr as a comparable novel, I think it’s valid from several perspectives. The best seller traces the paths of two protagonists from different cultures as they are affected and eventually brought together by events of World War 2. They are countered by various antagonists, formed mainly in the hands of racism and greed in German culture. The irony of the final conflict brought on by bombing by Allied forces accentuates the cultural clashes. An interesting fact is that a criticism of the book is that its portrayal is too soft on the sins of Germany. I intend to show equally even-handedness.
The manuscript spends most of the pages following the two protags as their lives change from the effects of World War 1 and its aftermath. There is plenty of irony, as Gretel’s two loves of her life, both German,
My second comparable is The Bohemian Flats: A Novel by Mary Relindes Ellis.
It is a story about an emigrant family's journey from Germany to The Flats in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the conflicts of nationalities forced to live together. The tale is told from a hospital bed of a shell shock victim in a non-linear way, with highly vivid detail. The family eventually needs to balance anti-Germanic sentiment and guilt from the culture's sins.
Assignment 5 CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
A Note in my Coat Pocket by Victor Frailing
A young German woman widowed by World War One and a young German immigrant from Germany in the United States, shell shocked from fighting in that same war struggle to overcome nationalistic pride and doubt, individually and ultimately together, by love, faith, and through recognizing and rejecting the nationalism and intolerance that caused world conflict.
Assignment 6 OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS
Both of the protagonists will face several inner conflicts. The following are specific examples.
Gretel, having been raised in a reasonably wealthy family environment, will be faced with her own pride and intolerance, trying to survive as a homeless pauper to find love in the land of her previous enemy.
To understand the cause of his battle induced shell shock, William must reconcile his fundamentalist faith with the new technique of diagnostic hypnotism recommended by his doctor.His brother the Lutheran minister gave a famous sermon calling the practice satanism.
A secondary conflict arises in William due to the pervading racism in Jim Crow United States in 1919. Having been raised on a rural Minnesota farm, he had little experience with black people besides a few newspaper articles. Riding the train back to Minnesota after the war, he encounters and befriends a former black soldier with whom he has much in common. A great deal of personal maturity needs to happen to replace his naivety with wisdom.
Assignment 7 THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
For the better part of the book, the protagonists are in separate worlds:
Gretel’s story begins in 1919 in their family’s Tudor-style home in Northern Germany, as Gretel’s brothers return from a day f looking or work singing. They are drunk. Once resplendent in Biedermeier furniture, the house is now somewhat threadbare and faded. Late afternoon light slants through the windows, illuminating flecks of meandering dust set alive as the patriarch strides in to demand an explanation. Gretel and her sister sit and mend castoff clothing piled neatly at their feet.
The next scene is in the village market square of Vlotho, Ostfreisland, Germany, a small village near the North Sea. A once proud and brightly colored town square, it is now populated with a spectrum of people of a decimated society. Women are most obvious, selling scrounged goods, used furniture, and items from various home enterprises. Most of the men hang around the beer tents, drinking, singing, and arguing about politics, sometimes loudly. The conversation centers around the Armistice, Americans, Jews, the French, bankers, and whom to blame for the current state of affairs.
The day is typically beautiful, with sparkling skies and the smell of beer and sausages permeating. A fancifully dressed few, enriched by the black market, prowl for innocents for prostitution and other vices.
The next scene is in a hospital across the Weser River that cares for the returned and defeated soldiers, many of whom are amputees. It is a former stone monastery with damp cold individual chambers and a large central room where doctors perform surgeries with beds around the periphery.
Gretel’s sister is a nurse here, and Gretel volunteers in an auxiliary society, rendering what aid she can to the women, wives, mothers, and children. Because of social mores, she is not allowed to talk to men—lots of echoes.
Following scenes: Relief center in town, passenger boat to United States, Lutheran Church in Minnesota.
William’s story has scenes in;
The gangplank of troopship disembarking from France, wandering streets of Brooklyn, train (Lakawana Express)Chicago Central Train station, hospital at Camp Dodge, Iowa. Livery stable,
Algonkian Retreats and Workshops 2023 - Assignments
in Algonkian Writer Conferences - Events, FAQ, Contracts
Posted
Assignment 1 THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT
The story is a romance, as the state of the world in the early twentieth century changes the lives of the two protagonists, bringing them together in strife and ultimately separating them in love.
The primary goal of Gretel, a well-born German woman, is to find love and her place in the world after World War 1, and its after-effects destroy much of what she has known and loved. Having lost her fiancé and family’s fortune, she immigrates to rural Minnesota for a new start.
William, a liveryman raised on a farm in Minnesota with a love and affinity for horses, suffers from shell shock and exposure to mustard gas from the same war. As he tries to reenter a changing world, he perceives a world full of injustice.
His goal is to learn to live with the damage he has suffered from the war and reconcile the changing world around him as his health deteriorates.
Assignment 2 THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT
Overall, the antagonist is the tendency of human nature to prefer one’s own tribe and to consider those different as inferior. This tendency is exemplified through the excessive military nationalism of Germany but is not exclusive to them.
This flaw of human nature is personified through several characters that move the plot at different stages of the story. Several antisemitic, misogynist and nationalistic villagers appear post-war and show their true colors in the pivotal year of 1923 Weimar Germany, including, to a lesser extent, Gretel’s own father and brothers. Some of these characters evolve through strife, while others don’t and are hardened in their prejudice.
William’s antagonists begin with his brother Martin, a firebrand Lutheran pastor whose fundamental Christian beliefs contradict William’s more tempered belief system and doubt. Affected physically and mentally by the war, William wrestles with his memories of horror and guilt over decisions made concerning horses under his care.
Upon returning to life in Minnesota, William begins to perceive the racism and prevalent prejudice in American society against blacks, native Americans, Jews, and a rising anti-German sentiment. These forces are personified in Martin, various members of the rural community, and William’s business partner.
Assignment 3 CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE
A Note in my Coat Pocket (my original choice)
The German Immigrant
Ordinary Sins
Assignment 4 DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES
While I worry it’s presumptuous to name All the Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr as a comparable novel, I think it’s valid from several perspectives. The best seller traces the paths of two protagonists from different cultures as they are affected and eventually brought together by events of World War 2. They are countered by various antagonists, formed mainly in the hands of racism and greed in German culture. The irony of the final conflict brought on by bombing by Allied forces accentuates the cultural clashes. An interesting fact is that a criticism of the book is that its portrayal is too soft on the sins of Germany. I intend to show equally even-handedness.
The manuscript spends most of the pages following the two protags as their lives change from the effects of World War 1 and its aftermath. There is plenty of irony, as Gretel’s two loves of her life, both German,
My second comparable is The Bohemian Flats: A Novel by Mary Relindes Ellis.
It is a story about an emigrant family's journey from Germany to The Flats in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the conflicts of nationalities forced to live together. The tale is told from a hospital bed of a shell shock victim in a non-linear way, with highly vivid detail. The family eventually needs to balance anti-Germanic sentiment and guilt from the culture's sins.
Assignment 5 CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
A Note in my Coat Pocket by Victor Frailing
A young German woman widowed by World War One and a young German immigrant from Germany in the United States, shell shocked from fighting in that same war struggle to overcome nationalistic pride and doubt, individually and ultimately together, by love, faith, and through recognizing and rejecting the nationalism and intolerance that caused world conflict.
Assignment 6 OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS
Both of the protagonists will face several inner conflicts. The following are specific examples.
Gretel, having been raised in a reasonably wealthy family environment, will be faced with her own pride and intolerance, trying to survive as a homeless pauper to find love in the land of her previous enemy.
To understand the cause of his battle induced shell shock, William must reconcile his fundamentalist faith with the new technique of diagnostic hypnotism recommended by his doctor. His brother the Lutheran minister gave a famous sermon calling the practice satanism.
A secondary conflict arises in William due to the pervading racism in Jim Crow United States in 1919. Having been raised on a rural Minnesota farm, he had little experience with black people besides a few newspaper articles. Riding the train back to Minnesota after the war, he encounters and befriends a former black soldier with whom he has much in common. A great deal of personal maturity needs to happen to replace his naivety with wisdom.
Assignment 7 THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
For the better part of the book, the protagonists are in separate worlds:
Gretel’s story begins in 1919 in their family’s Tudor-style home in Northern Germany, as Gretel’s brothers return from a day f looking or work singing. They are drunk. Once resplendent in Biedermeier furniture, the house is now somewhat threadbare and faded. Late afternoon light slants through the windows, illuminating flecks of meandering dust set alive as the patriarch strides in to demand an explanation. Gretel and her sister sit and mend castoff clothing piled neatly at their feet.
The next scene is in the village market square of Vlotho, Ostfreisland, Germany, a small village near the North Sea. A once proud and brightly colored town square, it is now populated with a spectrum of people of a decimated society. Women are most obvious, selling scrounged goods, used furniture, and items from various home enterprises. Most of the men hang around the beer tents, drinking, singing, and arguing about politics, sometimes loudly. The conversation centers around the Armistice, Americans, Jews, the French, bankers, and whom to blame for the current state of affairs.
The day is typically beautiful, with sparkling skies and the smell of beer and sausages permeating. A fancifully dressed few, enriched by the black market, prowl for innocents for prostitution and other vices.
The next scene is in a hospital across the Weser River that cares for the returned and defeated soldiers, many of whom are amputees. It is a former stone monastery with damp cold individual chambers and a large central room where doctors perform surgeries with beds around the periphery.
Gretel’s sister is a nurse here, and Gretel volunteers in an auxiliary society, rendering what aid she can to the women, wives, mothers, and children. Because of social mores, she is not allowed to talk to men—lots of echoes.
Following scenes: Relief center in town, passenger boat to United States, Lutheran Church in Minnesota.
William’s story has scenes in;
The gangplank of troopship disembarking from France, wandering streets of Brooklyn, train (Lakawana Express) Chicago Central Train station, hospital at Camp Dodge, Iowa. Livery stable,