Possible spoilers ahead.
So I finished reading it last night and while it was very interesting and intriguing, I’m not sure if I really understood what it’s about…
From what I know, it’s a semiautobiography of his life with Marlene Dietrich. Is that all?
1 Is there some deep meaning in the Ravic’s patients? I mean, I just wonder if they symbolize something. For example his first patient Kate sick with untreatable cancer that no one detected before – is it like a metaphor to how the nazis came to power? Then Lucienne that had a botched abortion – I can’t quite put it into words, but probably something about his country being “barren”(because of nazis)? Jeannot who is worried about the money he is gonna get from his leg amputation while his mother seems estranged – so the youth will essentially have to take responsibility for the world after the war that their parents started? Etc? Am I reading too deeply into it?
And also, since Ravic is an illegal surgeon, and due to the fact that he can’t really save his patients (Kate, Lucienne became a prostitute, Jeannot is probably the only really successful case but why?)? Is it meant to show Remarque’s own feeling of being powerless and unable to save people or his homeland?
2 Sibylla. This one I didn’t understand at all. Seems to be just a sad symbol/a classic woman in the fridge? But sybillas were also priestesses in ancient Greece that could see the future. What was the exact future that she predicted?
3 Haake and Joan. So basically Ravic kills both of them, one quite literally and one in a bit more metaphoric way. For some reason these plotlines left me a bit confused (tho they are literally the main plot lines), like if I didn’t quite get them…
4 Why the Arc of Triumph? Is it like the symbol of hope? And it is not visible in the end of the book, so hope is lost? But it’s still there in the dark?
NGL I feel a bit stupid since the novel seems pretty straightforward but yeah, what are your thoughts on the points above?
by vampireinheaven