Metaphorical representations of hunger and labor in Herta Müller's Atemschaukel

Abstract

My thesis offers a reading of Herta Müller's novel, Atemschaukel, published in the same year that the author won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I explore Müller's use of metaphors and demonstrate how Müller not only uses metaphor, symbol and allegory to overcome linguistic limitations of expressing suffering, but also how she uses these poetic devices to accurately describe one inmate's daily reality of systematic starvation, to represent more than just hunger or labor. My thesis focuses on Müller's style and the aesthetics of the novel. I address her use of metaphors and how they function. Specifically, I address Müller's metaphors of hunger and labor in the camp and what they represent for the protagonist Leo Auberg.