The Leaning Tower by Katherine Anne Porter
"The Leaning Tower" by Katherine Anne Porter is a narrative centered around Charles Upton, a young, impoverished art student from Texas, who arrives in Berlin in December 1931 with high hopes for his artistic journey. The story contrasts Charles's romanticized vision of Berlin as a vibrant cultural hub with the grim realities of his experiences in the city. As he navigates his new life, he encounters a series of unwelcoming landlords and fellow boarders, including Rosa Reichl, a once-affluent landlady who embodies the harshness of his surroundings.
Charles's interactions with three other young men—Otto, Tadeusz, and Hans—further expose the complexities of social class, identity, and the cultural tensions in pre-war Europe. The narrative serves as an initiation story, reflecting themes of disillusionment and the loss of innocence as Charles grapples with his stark realizations about the world around him. The climax unfolds during a New Year’s Eve celebration at a cabaret, where the temporary camaraderie among the boarders contrasts sharply with the underlying despair that Charles ultimately feels. The story culminates in a poignant acknowledgment of his emotional isolation, suggesting that superficial revelries cannot mask deeper existential struggles.
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The Leaning Tower by Katherine Anne Porter
First published: 1941
Type of plot: Coming of age
Time of work: 1931
Locale: Berlin
Principal Characters:
Charles Upton , the protagonist, an American art student in BerlinKuno Hellentafel , his boyhood friend from TexasRosa Reichl , his landladyOtto Bussen , a German mathematics studentTadeusz Mey , a Polish music studentHans von Gehring , a young German student from Heidelberg suffering from a dueling wound
The Story
This lengthy story opens in Berlin in late December of 1931 as Charles Upton, a young, poor art student, the son of a farming family in Texas, is seeking new quarters because his hotel is unpleasant, oppressive, and expensive. On Christmas Eve his thoughts turn to Kuno Hallentafel, a childhood friend from Texas and the son of a prosperous merchant. Kuno, whose family came from Germany and later returned for visits, spoke so glowingly of the beauty and grandeur of Berlin that Charles decided to study art there. Charles "in his imagination saw it as a great shimmering city of castles towering in misty light."
Much of the rest of the plot is devoted to showing how Charles's early romantic perceptions of Berlin are contradicted by the reality of his life there. In this sense, it is an initiation story common in American literature, in which the protagonist, usually a young person, is disabused of earlier beliefs, or loses his innocence, as he comes to a sobering new awareness or understanding brought about by his travels or encounters with different types of people. Charles's disillusionment with Berlin comes most dramatically at the hands of the hotel owners and landlords he encounters, in general a base, grasping, and ill-tempered group who have little sympathy for the people who need to rent their ghastly and uncomfortable furnished rooms. When Charles tries to move earlier than expected, one landlady even summons a police officer, who treats him with disdain as she cheats him of some of his meager resources. The most important landlady is Rosa Reichl, a once-wealthy, affected, overbearing, and intrusive woman. During their first meeting Charles accidentally breaks a small plaster replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a treasured memento of her honeymoon in Italy. In Rosa's furnished rooms, Charles comes to know three other young men who also are instrumental in his initiation.
The first of these young men is Otto Bussen, a very poor German mathematics student from Dalmatia. Bussen speaks Low German, an indication of his inferior social status. Under the guise of trying to improve him, Rosa continuously criticizes his manners and behavior. At one point he appears to try to commit suicide by poison, but he is saved by the efforts of Charles and the other boarders. The second boarder is Tadeusz Mey, a Polish student of music, also harassed by Rosa, who brings to Charles the perspective of an intelligent non-German who understands the larger cultural contexts of European history. The third boarder is Hans von Gehring, a student from Heidelberg who has come to Berlin for treatment of an infected dueling wound on his face, of which he is proud. Hans, at times a contemptuous and disdainful incipient Nazi, harbors notions of the superiority of the German race.
The last part of the story shifts from Rosa's rooms to a Berlin cabaret for a New Year's Eve celebration. Here again, the conflict between the three boarders is evident as they discuss women, social classes, racial distinctions, and World War I; for Charles, however, as the evening wears on and midnight approaches, the animosities dissolve into song and drunken camaraderie. The good will generated at the cabaret continues as the boarders return to their lodgings to find Rosa also happy from drinking champagne. At this point, Charles notices that the broken Leaning Tower of Pisa has been mended and is now behind glass in a corner cabinet. Charles's drunken jollity fades, however, as he begins to feel "an infernal desolation of the spirit." He expects that a good cry is all that is needed to complete the evening's adventure, but the concluding sentence indicates his deep and ultimate disillusionment: "No crying jag or any other kind of jag would ever, in this world, do anything at all for him."
Bibliography
Austenfeld, Thomas Carl. American Women Writers and the Nazis: Ethics and Politics in Boyle, Porter, Stafford, and Hellman. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Katherine Anne Porter: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.
Brinkmeyer, Robert H. Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development: Primitivism, Traditionalism, and Totalitarianism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
Busby, Mark, and Dick Heaberlin, eds. From Texas to the World and Back: Essays on the Journeys of Katherine Anne Porter. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2001.
Fornataro-Neil, M. K. "Constructed Narratives and Writing Identity in the Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter." Twentieth Century Literature 44 (Fall, 1998): 349-361.
Givner, Joan. Katherine Anne Porter: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Hartley, Lodwick, and George Core, eds. Katherine Anne Porter: A Critical Symposium. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969.
Spencer, Virginia, ed."Flowering Judas": Katherine Anne Porter. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
Stout, Janis. Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Walsh, Thomas F. Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.