Q1 Free Respose 1

This week I read eighty-two pages of Vienna Prelude, by Bodie Thoene. The story takes place in Eastern Europe in 1936, just as Hitler is taking power in Germany and Austria. The story follows the lives of many different people living in and around Berlin as they cross with the life of wealthy Aristocrat Elisa Lindheim. While she is by heritage half Jewish, she is a practicing Lutheran and did not inherit her father’s Jewish looks. She plays in a professional orchestra in Vienna, Austria, where she goes by the last name Linder as to be able to perform on all stages, since Jews were banned from performing. Throughout the novel, as people pass in and out of her life, we know things about them before even Elisa knows they exist. This makes it easy for us to tell how these people will play a significant role in her life.
There’s Franz, the mountaineer in the Austrian Alps, whose family will be opening their home for a few weeks to a family from Berlin. We as the reader quickly realize that it will be Elisa’s family staying with Franz while they find a safe place to escape the Gestapo.
John Murphy, an American reporter, is stationed in Berlin to report on the Nazi’s rise. He feels as though the rest of the world is not paying enough attention to the wrongs happening in Germany, and takes it upon himself to attempt to help at least one Jew. That Jew we soon realize will be Elisa.
There are many more characters that enter and leave Elisa’s life throughout the novel. Thinking of this, I began to wonder what our lives would be like if they were a book. We would know who we were about to meet before we saw their face. We would know what we would do in the future before we went to college. There would never be any need to worry because you could just skip a few pages ahead and see what happens next. But would life then really be worth living? Is it not the twists and turns, surprises and suspense of life that keep us getting out of bed each morning to face a new day?
Elisa faces constant fear and much uncertainty. These are the things that make her strong. If she were to know her family would escape successfully, she would not have fought so hard to help them. It is our uncertainty of the future that makes us brave and forces us to want to improve ourselves.