American Imago

The essay explores Anna Seghers's "The Excursion of the Dead Girls." In the story, questions about the narrator, and about the identity and difference between the narrator and the author, strike at the heart not only of Anna Seghers's artistic self-understanding but also her worldview. The autobiographical moment in the story is objectified in the process of literary creation. The difficulty of speaking in the first person, however, results not from the author's personal hesitation, but from the necessity of seeing her own existence in an historical light. What was urgent was the need to embolden people, to inspire them, even in view of utter hopelessness, with the courage to resist fascism.