Thursday, July 07, 2011

Martha

What did you think of her?

It's so interesting to me how her dad's job took her overseas briefly but that the experience completely determined the course of her life. I guess it's silly to think about how someone's life could have been different but for this event or that event, but it's so tempting with her. Her being in Berlin at that particular point in time was so decisive in her life, when she might easily have decided (as a grown woman) to not accompany her parents ...
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3 comments:

Erin said...

Martha was definitely interesting. I can't say I loved her -- all the flightiness, falling in love with everybody, liking the Nazis because of the blond young men's enthusiasm -- BUT she did what she wanted without apology, which is cool.

Interesting point about the course of her life. I found it a little odd at first that Bill and Martha went with their parents to Germany. They were adults, as you point out. I got the impression they just didn't have that much to do. (Although I guess Bill did enroll in college there.) Martha seemed like the kind of woman who just adapted to wherever she was, whoever she was with. Who knows where she might have wound up if she'd stayed in America. We can assume not a Communist exile in Prague.

8:46 PM, July 07, 2011
kc said...

Yeah, she's someone whose sense of freedom made her really unfocused in life. She just seemed to bounce from whim to whim to whim, from conviction to conviction to conviction. It was hard to respect her.

I would have respected her generous, open sexuality, if any of her love interests seemed serious and passionate; instead, they all seemed so trite and indiscriminate. As you noted, she was kind of an emotional chameleon.

Do you think her parents spoiled her? They seemed like such well-mannered, moderate people, but they never seemed to exercise any actual guidance over her. I found that strange. It's like they had a policy of appeasing Martha, just like Europe had a policy of appeasing Hitler.

3:22 PM, July 08, 2011
Erin said...

Yes, her parents' attitude was interesting. Dodd was sort of a stick in the mud in some ways, so I was surprised that he didn't seem to mind her gallivanting all over Berlin with various men, some of whom might have been dangerous or unwise to be with. Especially when it seemed to be frowned upon by others in the diplomatic world.

10:43 AM, July 11, 2011

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