Traces of the Power of the Proletariat Dictator in Herta Müller‘s Herztier

Abstract

The peculiarity of the novel as a work of imaginative narrative prose is its element of continuity. The fictional world reaches the reader because of the narrator's mediation. Therefore, the narrator is the most crucial element for readers to understand the story in the novel. This article examined the traces of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the novel Herztier by Herta Müller, which the first-person narrator mediated. By using Stanzel's narrative theory, this study focused on two problems. The first one was the description of the power system of the proletariat dictatorship in Herztier. The second one was the description of the characters' suffering caused by the dictatorial power system of the proletariat in Herztier. Using the content analysis method of the narrative situation in Herztier, an overview of the traces of dictatorial power in Romania was obtained through the narrative of the first-person narrator. The narrative of the first-person narrator in Herztier showed that her narrative of the proletarian dictatorship's power system and the suffering of society caused by the practice of the proletarian dictatorship system was obtained from the experience and testimony of the narrator.