SOURCE: "The Rhenish Foxes: An Approach to Heinrich Böll's Ende einer Dienstfahrt," in German Life & Letters, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, July, 1981, pp. 409-14.

In the following essay, Holbeche examines Böll's interpretation of the relationship between "the artist as social critic and the state" as evinced in his Ende einer Diensfahrt.

Like so many of Böll's works, Ende einer Dienstfahrt has sharply divided critical opinion. For some, mostly Eastern European critics, the Gruhls' 'happening' is an act of resistance against the West German state, and Birglar society a refuge of those humanistic values which are lacking on higher social and political levels. Some Western critics on the other hand have claimed that in presenting their action as a purely aesthetic one the Gruhls render it quite harmless—as Manfred Durzak has put it [in Der deutsche Roman der Gegenwart, 1979]: 'Statt Aufsprengung der Sinnlosigkeit steht am Ende Verharmlosung...