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Chapter 1
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
This report is a compilation of numerous different sources, so it may strike the reader as somewhat “fluid” from time to time, and it’s only natural for there to be “stoppages, blockages, siltings, [and] unsuccessful attempts at conduction” throughout.
Chapter 2 explains the format of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: it is a documentary of sorts, a collage of different sources stitched together to form a “fluid” story where possible, though, the narrator admits, this isn’t always possible: there will be bits of the story that don’t quite fit (“stoppages, blockages, siltings, [and] unsuccessful attempts at conclusion”). This chapter also introduces the water/plug imagery that will reappear throughout the novel.
Active
Themes
