Goodbye To Berlin

Many of the characters in the novel—but especially the characters that are given their own chapter headings—are archetypes of a certain kind of person who was most vulnerable to Nazi violence and intimidation. Sally Bowles led a decadent lifestyle, having many affairs with men while being rather outspoken and frank about her sexuality. On top of this, she has an illegal abortion without telling the father of the child. It’s not a far stretch to imagine that Sally—or other women similar to her character—would not fare well in the austerity of Nazi Germany. Otto and Peter are a gay couple; homosexuality was regarded as a crime by the Nazis. The Nowaks live in Berlin’s slums, prone to physical and mental illness due in large part to their poverty. This sort of poverty would not fit in well with the Nazi ideal of a rejuvenated and cleansed Germany. The Landauers, of course, being wealthy Jewish merchants, represented the greatest evil in the eyes of the Nazis. While the characters in Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin take on a life of their own, each one with his or her idiosyncrasies and nuance, they each also represent something larger than just themselves: the multifaceted and humanly-flawed German populations that would likely be purged in the wake of the Nazis.