Week 4: Zweig & Anderson

I read Stefan Zweig's short story Letter from an Unknown Women. I thought it was a very interesting read that really got me engaged in the dying women's story. I found a lot of similarities between Zweig's story and Grand Budapest Hotel.

The first thing I noticed about these artists is that they both start their stories without any introduction. Letter from an Unknown Women starts by jumping right into the main characters day with little information given as to who this R. man is. The beginning of Grant Budapest is just the women walking to the statue where she places a key and looks down at her book. We do not know who this woman is or why she is placing a key on this statue. I think in both stories this method gets the reader or watcher engaged instantly. The feeling of confusion and wondering it creates makes you want to keep reading to find out what the story is all about. 

The second big similarity I noticed is that both stories have multiple layers. They are both basically a story within a story. In the case of Grand Budapest one could argue that it is a story with in a story with in a story. The women is reading the story written by the author who is telling the story that was told to him by Zero the bell hop. Even then the Zero is mostly telling the story of M. Gustave. Basically Zweig's entire story is about R. reading the letter written to tell the story of the unknown women. This method of story telling has potential to be confusing but in both cases you have a clear understanding or where in the story you are and who is telling it.

A third similarity I saw was in the main characters of each story. R. in Letter from an Unknown Women was a lot like M. Gustave in the sense that they were both ladies men who had multiple lovers and from what the women in the letter described, both had a certain air about them that people seemed to be drawn towards them.

A fourth way I found they were alike was in some of the descriptions. In Letter from an Unknown Women, the unknown woman describes the place where she gave birth in pretty gruesome detail. When I read this I thought of the scene in Grand Budapest where the men escaping from jail are seen by the room of guard and moments later you see they have all be stabbed to death by one of the prisoners. I believe that this passage in the short story and this scene from the movie share the same gruesome, descriptive language. They aren't censored. The women writing the later goes very into detail basically saying the place was a living hell and in the movie you see all the blood and gore of the dead prison guards sort of out of the blue. Both authors were able to stick this random, creepy, uncensored scene into their work without it seeming out of place and still keeping the audience interested. Over all I could see how both works had a similar language and style that I found both interesting and entertaining.