SOURCE: “Hauptmann: Bahnwärter Thiel,” in Narration in the German Novelle: Theory and Interpretation, Cambridge University Press, 1974, pp. 169-87.

In the following essay, Ellis probes narrative technique and patterns of imagery in Bahnwärter Thiel, linking these to the work's theme of “rigid control and its loss.”

With Hauptmann's Bahnwärter Thiel¹ we return to a narrative in which the story-teller neither figures as a character in the story nor presents himself as an identifiable man telling it, but remains as the unidentified epic narrator. His story is, in outline, a fairly simple one, but his descriptions of the settings in which it takes place are often outlandish. The forest, for example, has a strange appearance: ‘ Die Stämme der Kiefern streckten sich wie bleiches, verwestes Gebein zwischen die Wipfel hinein, die wie grauschwarze Moderschichten auf ihnen lasteten‘ (62). The moon appears as a ‘ riesige purpurglühende Kugel’ (65), and...