Julya Rabinowichs “Split Head”

The following example essay on “Julya Rabinowichs “Split Head”” is an analysis of the literary work Oedipus the King. The essay reveals the plot of the novel and talks about the main characters.

Julya Rabinowichs “split head” is an intellectually challenging novel, not an easy reading fare. In 2008, the winner of the “Rauriser Literature Prize” debut novel was published in the Vienna edition exile; 2011 Deuticke has reissued the much acclaimed book.

Mischka comes from a Russian-Jewish family in Leningrad. Both parents are painting artist and critical intellectuals who have always refused to join the party.

They make their way secretly resistance. A retired colonel of the reserve they spied. In the 70s, the regime authorized the emigration applications numerous questions, because the opposition will be happy to deport, and Jews are not good suffered. Many emigrate to Israel or the United States; Mishka’s parents and grandmother Ada wish to Australia.

Your first transit station is Vienna. Listless suggests Mischka time in all art museums dead, they visited at the request of parents.

You should also read Dostoevsky to their Russian roots not to forget. So now the girl lives in the West, but to oppose lift the superficial consumerist American influences. How will she ever be at home here? Much rather she would hang out at the Naschmarkt, marvel at the variety of goods, watching junkies.

Father Lev ties, meanwhile, contacts and organized his first exhibition -. Which is an instant success. Although they never really revolutionaries, the artist couple takes as communism Escaped to the interests of the left-wing intellectuals.

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Now the family will stay in Vienna. Mishka starts school, but remains an outsider.

For her father Mishka wanted to be the “awaited successor son,” but it can not succeed. They experienced their first bleeding, disgusted by her body, the budding against their will hill which forms the fluff of hair sprouting she feels as a “harbinger of [their] failure” (p 81), she suffers from eating disorders. She is suddenly restricted in their freedoms. As a father, no nightly outputs longer allowed to fight is announced.

Mischka provoked with clothes and a shaved head, driving at night in discos and bars around, sleeping-Bahn U in the past. Her sister Magdalena was born – it is disabled, does not speak. The marriage of the parents kriselt rapidly. After the Berlin Wall fell, traveling father Lev to St. Petersburg, where he died and is buried. The stressful family situation are Mischka no support. She runs away to Berlin, lives in an apartment with students, criminals, feminists, alcoholics and other people.

How much Mischka under her painful identity crisis afflicting finds expression in their almost maniacal focus on mirrors and lenses, her face reflecting. It seeks constantly look at every opportunity in their eyes, never found. Who is she? Often enough, they frightened of himself, believes, as you look at the gap head, a demonic spirit, opposed, or even the witch Baba Yaga. Both are mythical figures with whom did you disobedient children in Russia fear “. Wait until the gap head comes, it inside out over your head and sucks thoughts and soul”

What drives Mischka in marriage to Franz? Is it her pregnancy? Is it love? Seek them security? Will they finally be able to take root as a wife and mother? None of this gives this relationship. Soon the two are divorced. Downright delusional to Mischka identified with the evil witch Baba Yaga. In this role, they must not only themselves, but also the child she carries within it, inflict violence; it kills it, and this wish she cherishes against Francis, who married for the second time.

Mischka to her native St. Petersburg travels, the house in which she grew up, and his father’s grave visits, they noticed that there no one welcomes you – one that is cut off at the time, has never reported. She’s a homeless.

What a bitter, painful, cynical, sarcastic evolution! A young girl is suddenly and unprepared deprived of their roots, transplanted into a strange world. Torn in itself, it is never actually in reality at, is full of rejection of others, but especially painful against itself. Your happiness does not find them in the golden west.

Mishka’s emotional excesses, abrupt turns, irrational nature and violent contradictions are reflected in the literary form. forced into short declarative sentences, the events chase preceded the reader. Middle of the text skips the narrator in completely different situations, different times, different places, formulated puzzling. Inserted italics remote lyrics have a poetic character, look at it from a different perspective, to tell, for example, experiences from grandmother Ada’s past.

“split head” is full of surprises, is at times very tiring to read, demands full attention. Has taken up the narrative thread of the reader, already the author shakes him by repeatedly playing with him, lined up rates in associative or sense developing or twisting or outright Dadaist way to each other – for example in the clockwork-like sequence of the number, word knowledge and power (S. 165 et seq.)