Ferousis The Children Of The Square: An Analysis

As suggested above, the image of the German occupiers that prevails in Ferousis’ book is strongly negative. They are referred to as ‘Huns’, ‘Satans’, ‘Satans of the North’, ‘black beasts of the Hell’, ‘the German beast’, ‘rabid dogs’ and ‘demons of the evil’, while their depiction as inhuman creatures with animal-like behavior is further underlined by the use of verbs like ‘barked’ and ‘roared’. In this respect, the portrayal of the Germans in the collections short stories by Fildisi and Ferousis displays a certain similarity in that in both books the Germans are portrayed as an incarnation of evil. In Ferousis’ book, however, this negative image is partly undermined in the second story of the book entitled ‘The Children of the Square’. The story is about a group of children who endanger themselves in order to help a German guard who is suffering from thirst.
Thirty years after the war had been fought and won and with the former enemy now a playing an key-role in the Cold War tensions the positive image of the German soldier that prevails in a good number of books for young readers published in the 1970s must be seen as an attempt on behalf of the writers to show the younger generation that ‘Germans should not be exclusively associated with warmongering’ and ‘that enmity between nations in not a clear-cut and absolute