Xenophobia as Political Dominance
Brought on by a series of economic and meteorological crises, Germany in the 1990s became a highly xenophobic place. The outsider was straddled with the citizens' anger over their unfortunate circumstances. This backdrop of xenophobia becomes the motivating force behind the main characters' internal struggles. For Sascha, his life is defined by his fear of being persecuted for his Turkish heritage. He's a lonely, repressed individual who keeps to himself for self-preservation. For his grandfather, the ethnic conflicts of Germany in the early twentieth century proved defining in his life's course. The old man kept his Turkish heritage a secret and kept his mouth shut while the German government persecuted his people. After a lifetime of bearing this weight, Sascha's grandfather commits suicide. Both men -- grandfather and grandson -- are troubled and oppressed by the xenophobic political dominant of their country. Their voices don't count against the masses which are motivated by fear, which in turn breeds more fear.
Defining One's Identity
Sascha's story is one of identity crisis. Although he didn't understand this at the time of his parents' deaths, he was hiding himself away from the world. Afterwards, he still hides, but he is deliberately learning to be more honest with himself. The crisis is Sascha's ethnic identity, which he feels he must hide because the Turkish people are not popular in Germany in the 1990s, through no real fault of their own. Without accepting this half of his ethnic identity, Sascha lives as a masked character, only half participating in life. He decides to take charge of his identity after vicariously experiencing his grandfather's guilt while reading through the old man's journals. Sascha vows to make peace for his grandfather by choosing differently, choosing openness.
Nature vs. Nurture
Sascha's life is largely defined by this question, one which he lays out extensively over the course of his grief. He feels and has always believed that he is first and foremost a German, a product of his environment. Even within this self-identification, however, Sascha feels like he is betraying some private, sacred part of himself. Although he would never dream of discussing this with the people around him, Sascha does confide in the reader. He spends the course of the novel attempting to reconcile his feelings of identification with his family and their multi-ethnic heritage with those feelings identifying with his birth country and citizenship in Germany. Whatever the outcome, Sascha is more concerned with calling attention to the injustice of needing to choose between these two apparently oppositional forces. He can see that the choices of the Germany people have placed him this paradoxical position.
