What a Beautiful Sunday!: Analysis of Major Characters
"What a Beautiful Sunday!: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the complex portrayals of key figures within a narrative set against the backdrop of the Buchenwald concentration camp. The central character, Gerard Sorel, also known as Sanchez, embodies the struggles of identity and ideology, reflecting on his experiences as a Communist Party member and intellectual survivor. His narrative is marked by a sense of unreality, shaped by his awareness of mortality and the shifting political landscape. Fernand Barizon, a fellow inmate, contrasts Sorel with his heart-driven approach to life, emphasizing loyalty and personal connections over ideological commitment. The character of Willi Seifert, a kapo in the camp, demonstrates the moral complexities faced by individuals who hold power in oppressive systems, while the presence of historical figures like Leon Blum and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe enriches the narrative's intellectual discourse. Additionally, the inclusion of Jehovah, a Jehovah's Witness, underscores the theme of faith amidst persecution. The text ultimately invites readers to explore the intersections of personal experience, political ideology, and historical context in a harrowing yet thought-provoking manner.
What a Beautiful Sunday!: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Jorge Semprun
First published: Quel beau dimanche, 1980 (English translation, 1982)
Genre: Novel
Locale: The Buchenwald death camp
Plot: Social morality
Time: World War II
Gerard Sorel, the narrator, also known as Sanchez, Camille Salagnac, Rafael Artigas, Rafael Bustamante, Larrea, Ramon Barreto, and other pseudonyms. He is a Spaniard and Communist Party member who spent time in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He narrates his story and never reveals his real name. From a bourgeois background, yet well known and trusted in the Party underground, Gerard survives the prison camp because of the Party's place in its organization. He is an intellectual, or observer, by temperament. He constantly compares individuals, national groups, and times in history. His prison camp experiences, especially the constant awareness of others' deaths, make him question the reality of his experiences and even of his existence. This sense of unreality is further fostered by his many identity changes and the changes, over the years, in the Communist Party line.
Fernand Barizon, a Communist Party member from France who survives Buchenwald with Gerard and discusses it with him fifteen years later. The meaning of his remark “What a beautiful Sunday!” is never articulated, though Gerard's memory of the statement resonates throughout the novel. Barizon is not an intellectual. He remembers his true and very physical love affair with a French garment union member, Juliette, and he has a zest for food and a desire for comfort. He is an extremely loyal friend. He never fully trusts the Party's insistence on organization because he operates more from the heart.
Willi Seifert, who is assigned by the Nazi SS to be kapo of the Arbeitsstatistik (record-keeping department). He had once been a member of the Communist Youth Movement. With his power in the camp, though he also is a prisoner, he is able to save Party members and others from extermination by assigning them to non-life-threatening jobs. He is a man of great personal authority, yet he is later frightened by Joseph Stalin's purges and eventually disappears.
Henk Spoenay, a Dutch prisoner who acts as liaison between Seifert and the SS. He is the same age as Gerard, and they are friends.
Leon Blum, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Johann Peter Eckermann, who are visualized by the narrator, Sorel. Blum, ironically, not only was a leader of the Socialist Party and the Popular Front, and therefore ultimately imprisoned on the premises of Buchenwald, but also was the author of a book of conversations between Goethe and Eckermann. Some of the conversations in Blum's book were supposed to have taken place at Etters Hill, near Weimar, the site of Buchenwald.
Jehovah or Johann, one of the much-persecuted Jehovah's Witnesses at Buchenwald. He opens every conversation with Sorel by quoting a passage from the Bible that is appropriate to the moment.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian dissident who writes of the Stalinist gulag. Sorel eventually realizes the parallel between the institutions of Communist labor camps and those of Nazi internment camps. Consequently, Sorel acknowledges the Russian Revolution as a historical catastrophe.