Epigraph Of Anna Funder

On August 13th, 1961, a strange wound cut through the city of Berlin, Germany. The scar, the Wall, was torn down on November 9, 1989, but the damage had already been done. The people of Berlin were separated, the city split into two world; the West, and the East. The people in the East were placed under strict surveillance by the Stasi, victims of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Anna Funder, an Australian journalist, draws to the stories of the victims of the Wall and the Stasi. She studies the wounds caused by the regime, some scarred and some still raw. Citizens and Stasi alike were affected by this regime, and during Funder’s time she sees the aftermath of the damage in the world around her. She constructs a world that sympathises with the people of East Berlin.
The epigraphs used in the beginning of the text construct a sense of the appalling history of Berlin, and the ‘justice’ used against the people. Funder alludes to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland throughout the text, beginning with the epigraph; “‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. ‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards.’” This is a reflection of the attitude the Stasi had on
Her own process of dealing with her past – vergangenheitsbewältigung – is evident. When Funder first meets Miriam, she is wearing dull grey, devoid of colour. By describing her clothing and colour scheme, Funder provides a contrast to the woman shown to her and the colourful girl Miriam describes herself as what she used to be. Her development in healing her own scars is shown in the later chapters, when she appears in white. White is a colour that symbolises purity and innocence, thus Miriam has somewhat ‘purified’ herself of her past, and had gained closure on