The Exhibit (Historical Context)

Historical Context

“The Exhibit” is contained in Lisel Mueller’s Second Language collection, published in 1986. But regardless of the year or even the decade in which her poetry was written, much of the historical influence on it comes not from the time she was writing it, but from the earlier part of the twentieth century. In her 1989 interview with Rubin and Heyen, she stated that, “There’s no way anymore for the individual to escape from history, the public life we all share. Being European born, I felt this very strongly. That is the story of my parents, who were born shortly before World War I, and their whole life was determined by history. Everything was imposed on them from the outside because the twentieth century in Germany was catastrophic.”

Although Mueller left Germany in 1939, she lived there long enough to experience Adolph Hitler’s rise to chancellor of the country, his creation of the Third Reich, the elimination of all political parties other than National Socialism, and the opening of the first concentration camp at Dachau. In the year she and her family fled their homeland, Hitler invaded Poland, and France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. At fifteen, she was very aware of the social and political atrocities taking place around her, and she witnessed the pain and stress inflicted on citizens and soldiers alike, as well as on her own loved ones.

By the time “The Exhibit” was published in the 1980s, Lisel Mueller had been a naturalized American for over 40 years. No industrial nation, however, is isolated from events happening around the world. Even as a citizen of the United States, the poet experienced the strain of social unrest in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, and the Cold War, which spanned decades before coming to a symbolic end with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The turbulent times of the 1960s and 1970s had a profound effect on Mueller herself, and, subsequently, on the work she produced afterwards. In her 1985 interview with Nancy Bunge, she commented on her life during the years of the Vietnam War: “Those were bad years for me, not in terms of my private life, but in terms of being involved in the shame and guilt and wrongness of this country. I took it all very personally, and perhaps the history of Nazi Germany in the back of my mind made me feel involved with it.”

Obviously, what is in the back of one’s mind plays a significant role in “The Exhibit.” The horrors associated with war and with being a prisoner of war are constantly in the back of the uncle’s mind. He portrays a classic example of “post-traumatic stress syndrome” (PTSS), a term referring to a cluster of symptoms experienced by survivors of especially traumatic events in their lives. According to the “Sleep Disorders: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” Web site, PTSS derived from an earlier attempt to describe the effects of war upon war survivors in the twentieth century. “Shell shock” and “battle fatigue” were previous terms that psychologists used to describe the common symptoms, including recurring nightmares, hypersensitivity, and intrusive thoughts, feelings, and memories. While there is no direct mention of the uncle having nightmares, the implication is there, and the memories of his life during the war frequently intrude upon his mind. His heightened sensitivity is evidenced in the last line which tells us that his eyes are “dry wells that fill so easily now.” He is so sensitive to the “terrible world” that he has invented a make-believe one in which unicorns once ruled with kindness and gentleness, and he insists that this mythological land and time must be “possible.”

Compare & Contrast

• 1982: The Vietnam War Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, is dedicated in Washington D.C.
• 1982: Helmut Kohl becomes chancellor of West Germany. Over the following decade he would be a major factor in the country’s unification with East Germany.
• 1987: Nazi leader Klaus Barbie is convicted of World War II crimes.
• 1991: The Persian Gulf War begins as the United States and its allies drop bombs on Iraq and Kuwait.
• 1993: The movie Schindler’s List, centering on the real life events of a German man who helped hide Jews during the Holocaust, wins the Oscar for Best Picture, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated in Washington D.C.
• 1995: U.S. Army veteran Timothy McVeigh is arrested for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 169 people and remains the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.