A Study Guide for Ursula Hegi's "Stones from the River"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Ursula Hegi's "Stones from the River," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535834179

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Stones from the River

Ursula Hegi

1994

Introduction

Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi, is the story of a dwarf who lives in the fictional small town of Burgdorf, Germany, through the first half of the twentieth century. The novel is an intimate look at what it was like for ordinary people to live through the rise of Adolf Hitler and the devastation wrought by the Third Reich. The novel conveys the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust as these become apparent in the small town. The advent of Nazism provides the context for an in-depth analysis of certain universal psychological tendencies, chief among which are the search for identity through group membership, the desire for social acceptance, and the fear of ostracism.

The novel demonstrates the nature of difference and how policies of exclusion divide a community. It also exposes the ways in which the Catholic Church and the fascist state engendered fear and promoted discrimination. Townspeople are persuaded by beliefs about community solidarity and outsider status, and the plot enumerates the diverse human impulses and choices at work when various people live in close proximity over decades, weathering global conflict twice in their lives.

In her acknowledgments, Hegi thanks her godmother, Käte Capelle, who broke the silence by documenting her memories of the war years. The novel exposes the little-known reality as it was experienced by the small-town German population. It addresses the common question about how decent Germans could have allowed the Holocaust to happen. Stones from the River was well received in 1994 when it first appeared, but it became a bestseller in 1997 when it was chosen for Oprah's Book Club list.

Despite Faulkner's roots in the South, he readily condemns many aspects of its history and heritage in Absalom, Absalom!. He reveals the unsavory side of southern morals and ethics, including slavery. The novel explores the relationship between modern humanity and the past, examining how past events affect modern decisions and to what extent modern people are responsible for the past.

Author Biography

Ursula Hegi, author of Stones from the River and at least nine other books, was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, on May 23, 1946. When she was eighteen, she moved permanently to the United States, settling in New Hampshire, where she married and raised two sons. Though her academic degrees are variously reported, several sources indicate she received both her B.A. and M.A. from the University of New Hampshire in the late 1970s and that, after graduating, she remained at the university in a teaching position. Apparently in the 1990s, she lived in Spokane, Washington, and taught at Eastern Washington University. Thereafter, she lived in New York State and wrote full time. She has served as a conference participant or visiting professor at a number of academic institutions, including University of California at Irvine, University of North Dakota, University of New Hampshire, and Barnard College.

Though she began writing as a child, Hegi waited until she was in her forties to pursue a career in writing. As a German American, she was aware that Americans knew more about Germany's World War II history than many Germans did, who had reached their adulthood in a culture sworn to secrecy about the Holocaust. Some of Hegi's works draw upon a cluster of characters that were born before or during the world wars and lived part or all of their lives in the fictional town of Burgdorf, near Düsseldorf, Germany. Two of these works are Floating in My Mother's Palm (1981), a collection of interrelated stories, and the novel, Stones from the River (1994). Two Burgdorf residents who immigrated to the United States and their descendents are the focus of her novel The Vision of Emma Blau (2000), which tells the German-American, multigenerational story of a family-operated grand apartment house in New Hampshire. A cultural change of pace is Hegi's Sacred Time (2003), a work with three narrators,