Anthropological dimensions of everyday isolation in Marlen Haushofer’s novel “The Wall”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2311-259x.2026.1.8Keywords:
literary anthropology, poetics of everyday life, isolation, (post)apocalypse, "The Wall", Marlen HaushoferAbstract
This study aims to examine the anthropological specifics of the poetics of everyday life under the conditions of human isolation. The object of study is the novel The Wall (Die Wand, 1963), the best-known work by the Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer. To achieve this goal, the phenomenon of the barrier and its perception, which goes through several stages (from a state of initial bewilderment to total disregard), was studied. The mechanisms by which the female narrator adapts to the new reality and her methods of communicating with the outside world were traced. Emphasis was placed on the role of fauna in the anonymous narrator’s survival on both the physical and mental levels. The methodological basis of the study was the principles of literary anthropology, which includes the positioning of the individual in the absence of people, in a world of plants and animals. The relevance of the research lies in the (re)reading of M. Haushofer’s novel in the post-pandemic era, with the threat of (post)apocalypse for humanity, and the lack of a systematic study of her work in the field of German studies in Ukraine.
The results of the analysis show that The Wall demonstrates the author’s invariant adaptation of humans to a new everyday life in the conditions of (post)apocalypse. The metaphor of the wall, located in the chronotope of the Austrian Alps in the mid-20th century, helps the writer mark the boundaries “civilization — nature” and “society — individual”. The isolation offers an opportunity to reevaluate stereotypical relationships in society, as well as those between humans and animals. Therefore, the former relationships are undermined and have a traditional negative connotation in the context of social roles; the latter are not opposed, but receive a new focus from the perspective of communication between partners. The poetics of everyday life, with the narrator’s (retrospective) self-reflection, reveal models of adaptation in living beings when human social attributes are reevaluated, and new meanings of existence are formed. Prospects for further study of The Wall may lie in applying the comparative method to the novel in the context of science fiction (C. Simak and S. King).
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