The Assault

This theme strongly pervades Mulisch’s entire narrative. Its earliest iteration probably occurs when Anton feels moved by his captor’s death. Schulz, the Nazi soldier who was responsible for transporting Anton on the night of the assault, is injured by an Allied bombing campaign and bleeds to death. Anton witnesses his death, and from his vantage point as a child who has just suffered a shocking trauma, the larger contexts of the war escape him. All he sees is a human being losing his life. Therefore, through the manner in which Mulisch depicts Anton’s character and experience, he communicates that war is not only about the ideological and political, but also about the smaller and immediate human experience. This assertion, in turn, makes absolute moral pronouncements difficult.

The driving incident of the entire narrative—the murder of Ploeg and the subsequent firebombing of Anton’s home and the murder of his entire family—also exemplifies this theme. For one, it seems unquestionable that it was right to assassinate Ploeg, the brutal and sadistic Nazi Inspector. However, the fact that the Resistance knew that reprisals for Ploeg’s death would befall innocent bystanders complicates the rightness of Ploeg’s assassination.