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2 von 2 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
5.0 von 5 Sternen
Crimes against humanity are a catching disease, 25. Juni 2000
The situation described in the book and the use of the Shoah are quite different. A high school student discovers an old man in his neighborhood is an ex-SS who was the commander in the concentration camp of Patin. « Bergen-Belsen, January 1943 to June 1943. Auschwitz, June 1943 to June of 1944, Unterkommandant. Patin... You left Patin just ahead of the Russians. You got to Buenos Aires.... » (p. 112-113) The 13-year-old teenager blackmails the old man into telling him all the gritty details. But curiosity kills the cat. He is so taken over by the stories that his school work, that was previously perfect, declines from straight A's to flunking in the space of six months. He hides the fact from his parents by falsifying his report cards, then he uses the old man and brings him into the school picture to save his skin and avoid a direct contact between his guidance counselor and his family by short-circuiting it. The old man pretends he is the grandfather of the teenager and that the parents are going through a difficult phase. Then the old man forces the teenager to catch up on his work. The teenager accepts, though reluctantly, and he passes the year brilliantly. The parents will never know the truth. Yet, to force the teenager into studying, the old man blackmails him in his turn by telling him a full record of the « adventure » is in a safe-deposit box in a bank. The teenager is afraid the old man may die and then the truth should come out. Time passes and the teenager little by little finishes his high school and prepares for college. He distends his relation with the old man, though he always keeps some fear, because the old man is frail, he chain-smokes and he drinks heavily. During those years, though, the morbid curiosity of the teenager leads him to an even more morbid experimentation : killing vagrant people in empty places where they get shelter for the night, such as the old station that is no longer used. At the same time the recollections of the old man lead him to experimenting - to save his sleep and balance - the killing of animals and then alcoholics that he lures to his home with the ambiguous promise of a meal and a couple of dollars. Then he buries them in his cellar. One night, the old man has a heart attack while in the process of burying one of his victims. He calls the boy, who is supposed to read things to him because of his bad eyesight, and makes him clean up the mess before calling an ambulance and covering his urgent visit with a lie about a letter from Germany that he read, though in German. But everything goes even faster. In the hospital, in the next bed, another old man, an ex-prisoner in Patin, recognizes the old ex-SS commander and reports him to the Israeli secret services at the Israeli Embassy. The man is thus trapped and forced to find a way out to avoid trial : he commits suicide. In spite of the fact that no secret safe-deposit box in any bank appears, the teenager is ruined by another incident. The guidance counselor goes to a convention in the city were the real grandfather lives. Being bored by the conference, he gets in touch with the old man and visits him. But he finds the grandfather in a wheelchair, and this grandfather does not look in the least like the grandfather who visited him some three years before. The publicity around the death of the ex-SS reveals the true identity of the false grandfather, both to the guidance counselor and the parents. Then the teenager is trapped. And he has no real answer to the questions he may be asked and is asked. So he goes on a killing spree with a .30-.30. He kills Ed French, the guidance counselor, then gets to a hideout over the highway where he ambushes going-by cars and the police will need six hours to take him down. Here the Shoah is very crudely described in its perversion and it is treated like a catching disease that infest the curious teenager and leads him to crime, murders, delinquency and final death, just as much as it causes the old ex-SS to fall in a relapse and become a criminal again. In other words, crimes against humanity are never finished. They always find, in some individuals, a perfect ground to prosper. Humanity will always commit such crimes because the sheer knowledge of them will lead some individuals into committing new crimes of the same type. Crimes against humanity are an incurable disease. The Shoah is the example and starting point in the book. Those who will be infested will always find some « marginal » people to give way to and carry out their crime desire, their death instinct, their Thanatos, as well as they will also, as some kind of side effect, develop antisemitism and racism. Vagrant people, or alcoholics, or homeless people will be their natural victims in our society. The film follows the book closely but erases all the gritty details and reduces the criminal development of the teenager. The film is thus a lot less explicit and effective. Yet the meaning is the same as in the book. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universities of Paris IX and II.
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1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
5.0 von 5 Sternen
King's best and-practically-unknown written stories., 8. Mai 1999
I read "Different Seasons" in the early 80's, after I became totally taken, not by the nature, but by the style of "The Shining" (the way the story was told and the way I got engulfed on the thoughts and on the basic nature of its characters.) Unlike "The Shinning", the stories of "Different Seasons" became a total reading experience -same writer, different themes-. In "The Body", Stephen King masterfully explores the romanticism and nostalgia of childhood discoveries among the most unlikely friends. "Apt Pupil", on the other hand, focuses on the unexpected sources of potencial evil, an exchange that goes beyond age and culture. Hope is ,at the end, the predominant theme in both "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and "The Breathing Method". Without missing the expected gory and violent scenes(especially in "Apt Pupil") this compilation of novellas was then -in the early 80's-, and still is my favorite Stephen King publication!
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4.0 von 5 Sternen
Dark, but good., 15. Juni 2000
This great Novella from different seasons is very evil, dark, and disturbing. It is about a teenager boy you becomes obsessed with a wanted war criminal nazi. He becomes to turn bad himself, and goes crazy, slowly but surely.It is a great book especially if you are interested in Hitler and WW2.
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