Anna Seghers was in exile in Mexico, recovering from a car accident, when she wrote this story. The narrator, in exile in Mexico, seems to hallucinate about a time from her past. She recalls events during a school outing when she and her friends were quite young – so, even before WWI. The narrative jumps back and forth in time as she tells us about the daytrip itself, but also about the complicated pasts of her classmates, all of whom were affected by their cultural and political surroundings from before WWI up through WWII. The story is framed by the narrator’s “real” existence in Mexico at beginning and end – and the story ends with her memory of her teacher assigning her to write about the daytrip. She says “Suddenly I remembered the task that my teacher had set me – to write a detailed account of the school outing. I wanted to do this right away, tomorrow or tonight even, when I no longer felt so tired.” We should assume that what we have just read, is that essay assignment she was assigned.
How does the narrator envision the German of her past? How does this contrast her surroundings in exile? And what about the people she remembers? Why is it necessary for her to include her classmates’ complicated pasts in an assignment that was initially supposed to be about the daytrip itself?
