The White Hotel
The White HotelWrought with images of death, love, desire and life, D.M. Thomas’ novel, The White Hotel, takes readers on an unexpected historical tour of one of the world’s most horrifying events. Narrated in the first and third person, as well as with an omniscient narrator, Thomas begins in the middle of the story momentarily causing confusion on the reader’s part. Thereafter the story continues at the beginning and gives us an ending that is not an ending but a new beginning for the main character, Lisa Erdman. Each chapter is almost its own entity but many parallels and symbols can be seen in each, linking them into a cohesive story and a web swelling with meaning and dire premonitions of an inevitable future. Lisa’s poem and prose, “Don Giovanni” (Chapter 1) and “The Gastein Journal” (Chapter 2) gives clues and alludes specifically to the chapter entitled “The Sleeping Carriage” (Chapter 5) where the horrific reality of Babi Yar and the Holocaust are plainly laid down for the reader. Lisa’s own life experiences and fears are also justified in Chapter 5 and the events that lead up to her death in Babi Yar. The last parallel that I will explore is the one present between Chapters 1 and 2 and “The Camp” (Chapter 6) where a reader’s belief must be suspended and life restores all those that died in the preceding chapters.
Finally, I will put Lisa “on the couch” (much like Freud did in Chapter 3, “Frau Anna G.”) and explore a variety of psychoanalytic theories and defense mechanisms and see how the character of Lisa applies to them and how she has exhibited them throughout the novel.
Parallels and Symbolism
The metaphysical qualities that Lisa possesses does not become apparent until Freud’s letter in which he tells her, “It is clear that you are especially sensitive” (196) and when the events of Babi Yar occur in Chapter 5. Numerous parallels occur, that only a few can be presented henceforth. Chapters 1 and 2, in which Lisa’s poetic nature surfaces, alludes and directly parallels the events leading up and occurring at Babi Yar. Just as the fire consumed a portion of the White Hotel, a fire consumed the center of the city where Lisa and Kolya lived in Chapter 5. In the latter fire, an old man brought about the comment that the Germans could be blaming the “Yids” for that fire. This can also be a parallel with the fire in the White Hotel. Lisa’s passion and sexual excess could be to blame for the fire that blazed within the hotel: “I could not stop myself I was in flames/from the first spreading of my thighs” (15). Her heightened sexual excitement incited such a ferocious outburst of passion that the hotel itself burst into flames. The monstrous quantity of murdered individuals and the evil that...
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