Identity
One of the central themes of the novel is the search for identity. The narrator is almost obsessive about working out his own personal identity while recognizing that everyone’s own personal identity is shaped and formed to some degree by a larger sense of culture identity. When it comes to the German cultural identity and all the prickly history of the 20th century associated with it, personal identity becomes that much more complicated:
“I had no identity. People around me increasingly had problems with this. It was as if the fall of the Wall, the collapse of the old order, had not only had a liberating function. Without a wall, they could no longer feel safe.”
Multiple Identity Disorder
The real problem with trying to fashion a person's identity from the pressures that cultural identities place upon one is that there are precious few indeed who can honestly assert they have just one cultural identity to work with. Indeed, for the protagonist, he is trying to juggle three distinctly divergent cultural pressures upon his personal identity:
“…a situation has emerged which corresponds to my personal origin and situation. In Germany now, a trialogue is developing among Germans, Jews, and Turks…I live in a void which offers me nothing to which to attach the fraying threads which are meant to connect me to the three parts of myself. Three bucking, blocking parts”
Sliced Genes
In addition to the pressures of cultural identities, of course, there is also the issue of genetics. One can run from their culture and succeed, but while one can run from their genes, it is much more difficult to make a success at it. Of course, they can find assistance from the parental figures themselves:
“I did not even have to avoid my father. He disappeared of his own accord…I seldom saw my mother, either. There was almost nothing left in my life to remind me of her.”
Translation
It should come as little surprise in light of all the myriad competing pressures of external identity bearing down upon him that the narrator should become a writer who learns the value of the translator in the modern world. In his contemplation of their place within modern society, the imagery is one which extols the effort to undo the damage of Babel:
“Translators know neither truth nor lies. A translator is the others’ liar. If he sees a truth that does not match the others’ truth he has to keep it to himself. Were he to reveal this truth, the others would just complain about the bad translator. Without translators the world would fall apart in many places. They make many seams invisible. Only those who are too close to the seams feel the pain, the itching and burning where the stitching runs.”
