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Chapter 15
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ethics in Journalism
Truth, Lies, and Narrative
Class, Hierarchy, and Exploitation
Dignity and Compassion
Summary
Analysis
Katharina’s interrogation begins at 11:00 and ends at 5:45. During the brief lunch break, she refuses to accept food or drink from the officers. Despite Beizmenne’s relaxed, friendly demeanor, Katharina insists on spending the lunch break in her cell. She eventually accepts a slice of cake and tea a policewoman brings her from a nearby café, but she insists on paying for it herself. The policewoman decides that Katharina has “no sense of humor.”
The narrator began the story with the advice to take everything with a grain of salt, emphasizing the power of storytelling and narrative to distort the truth. Here the reader observes a situation that could be interpreted in opposite ways, resulting in either a positive or a negative judgment of Katharina. Giving Katharina the benefit of the doubt, one might interpret Katharina’s initial refusal to accept food or drink as a sign of her politeness or her anxiety about her present situation. But the policewoman’s impression of Katharina is far less charitable, and she sees Katharina as being cold or aloof—as having “no sense of humor.” Though she is capable of empathizing with Katharina, she chooses not to.
Active
Themes
