Atrocities Against Women In War
One of the reasons that his book is even more relevant today than at the time of its initial publication is the central theme of atrocities committed against women in situations of war. Women are traditionally the most defenseless of victims; generally left behind to keep the home fires burning, they suffer deprivation and hardship and have no power at all to defend themselves. The women in Berlin, including the narrator, are the victims of multiple rapes; the Russian soldiers actively seek out women to rape and seem to conduct a secondary campaign of violence against women . There are no police to arrest the men, there is no higher authority who will defend them and there is no retribution or punishment sir the rapists. The theme is the overriding theme of the chronicle and it becomes the theme of the narrator's existence long after the war has ended and the occupying army has left.
Hardships For Civilians in the War
The effect of war on the troops is well-documented in multiple writings but less well-documented is the effect of the war in the civilians in countries involved in the warfare. This effect is one of the themes of this chronicle. Those left in Berlin see a city falling down around them as the bombs fall and artillery rains down. Accommodation options narrow and more and more people are forced to cram into smaller and smaller spaces. Eventually they end up in the basement (the cave dwellers) with no power or running water. Food is scarce at best and each woman in the city is forced to make what amounts to a deal with the devil in order to get food and prevent their own starvation. Laws are out of the window because the occupying army in this case steal without punishment and rape without fear. The entire landscape of life is as bleak for those at home as it is for those at the front.
War Changes Everything
The chronicle ends with the narrator wondering about her relationship with her ore-wartime boyfriend and his inability to accept the changes that he detects in her. She talks openly about her experiences and the fact she was raped and he would rather that she kept this compartmentalized in her wartime experiences and acted as if they had never happened. It becomes apparent that she is unable to do this and he is unreasonable for expecting her to. This theme illustrates the total metamorphosis a person in the narrator' situation undergoes and the way in which their lives are changed irreversibly as a result.
