The Wall Jumper

The Wall Jumper was a book that was set in the time of the Berlin Wall. It is a collection of stories told from a western Berliner who meets many people and listens to their ways of life and then he tells of their recollections and the troubles they have had along the way. I think that in the book we find many people that have had to go through the separation of Berlin and that do not know how to act to the new situation that they have been put in. We meet many different people from both the east and west that think that the other side of the country is better, the narrator tells us these two Eastern brothers that devise a system with a rope to cross the wall several times to go and watch the new westerners movies that were playing. But he also tells of a western man that was supposed to marry an Eastern woman but she kept standing him up, however he started to notice the cheaper prices of the East and the more structured way of the East and he fell in love with it and finally after three years decided to move there and start his life again. I think for the people of Germany, and Berlin especially, it was a hard time for them to figure out what was going on in their country and what their government wanted them to do. I can see how both the East and the Westerners could see that the grass was greener on the other side. The east under communism and the West was capitalist both being drastically different made the people strive for what they did not have and made them want the forbidden.