Essay

q. How is the idea of curiosity explored in the novel, Hitlers Daughter?

The 1940’s was a time of immense tragedy and discrimination towards Jews with the arrival of great
distress due to the sudden extreme rise of war in Germany. One of the indications of this turmoil
was a sense of curiosity about why and how this was all happening. It is then with quite composure
that Hitlers Daughter, a novel written by Jackie French, set in comparison to 1940’s Germany and
2000’s Australia, should explore curiosity as one if it’s major themes. Many of the characters in the
novel who recognise the wrongs in the world, do so because of their curiosity, this is conveyed
through themes. This essay will explore how the stories of one another are the fundamental cause
of curiosity for 2 characters: Mark and Heidi.

In a nutshell, Hitlers Daughter is a novel that sightsees the life of 3 kids listening to a story about an
unfortunate young girl, who happened to be Hitlers daughter. Mark, a soft-spoken, young Australian
boy, is indubitably the most curious. He asks questions about almost everything that meets his eye.
This can be perceived at the start of the novel; the first page of the novel introduces Mark by
showing that he is asking a question: ‘’Do cows ever get colds?’’ ‘’what would happen if they
sneeze?’’. Mark uses emotive language and expression to convey his curiosity. When Anna tells the
story about Heidi, Mark tries to pretend that the story being told, is just a fictional story ‘’It’s just a
story, nothing more. But there were real things happening’’ (Mark pg. 43) this indicates that Mark is
getting repelled by the story Anna is telling and he wants to stop thinking about it because he has an
over-flowing amount of questions, this represents one of the themes: ‘loss of innocence’.
Mark is also being encountered with several moral dilemmas, particularly the question of whether
children get the evilness from their parents and how parents deal with such behaviour ‘’if everyone
thinks something is right, but you know it’s wrong, what do you do then?’’ (Mark pg. 33) The explicit
sense of questioning makes the reader understand that his bluntness is a result of his curiosity. This
displays a sense of fear that Mark has, that relates to himself and links bonds between him and
Heidi.

Heid. A young innocent German girl, who was unfortunate enough to be the daughter of Adolf
Hitler. Heidi goes through more than just being curious, she goes through ‘loss of innocence’
through curiosity. For Example: Heidi finds out about her father’s doings, which is what drove her
into escaping the country and starting a new life, not as Hitlers daughter but as Heidi, this conveys
an accurate representation of loss of innocence because Heidi never knew what Hitler was doing,
when she found out, she got scared. Moreover, Hitler abandoned her: ‘’I don’t know if he loved her
or not’’ (Anna pg. 12) The direct use of unknowingness delivers a sense of empathy towards Heidi.
As it is shown in the novel, Heidi always wonders why she is never able to go to an actual school or
why her father is never really around and why she isn’t allowed to have any friends. Furthermore,
she is treated like an embarrassment by her father because she isn’t at the right standards of beauty
that her father created, she had a limp and blemishes all over her body. Her father is also very
ignorant about Heidi, ‘’After Heidi’s brief meeting with Hitler she thought ‘’for a moment I existed’’
(Heidi pg. 109). In this quote the main component is emotive language because by using emotive
language, she has just showed that she feels like a nobody. In Heidi’s case, curiosity is explored
alongside the theme ‘loss of innocence’.
Mark and Heidi. Both of them show curiosity, but through what? Mark asks questions to his parents
about the ‘nature of evil’ and the fact that loyalty over-rides morality to family. Heidi never knew
what her father was doing, she was innocent, but when she found out about his actions, she lost her
innocence. This all links back to Themes. In this novel, characters show curiosity through themes. For
Example: In a very key scene in the novel, Mark asks his parents a rather surprising question: ‘’No,
Dad, I’m serious, if you did bad things, really bad things, what do you think I should do?’’. This quote
that Mark has presented links to the theme ‘Nature of Evil’. Represented in a straight-forward
manner. On the other hand: Hitler often gives dolls to Heidi, the dolls he gives are so much more
beautiful than her, hence, she imagines that if she was that beautiful what would her life be like?
Imagination, being one of the minor themes, shows us that by imagining, Heidi escapes her daily
reality. Another major theme in this novel is ‘Duty to parents’; It is the bond that helps the
characters to survive a few of the very major conflicts in the novel. Duty to parents is explored
through curiosity mostly by Heidi, she is always asking about Hitler, always imagining if he loved her
the most out of all his ‘children’. Hitler failed his ‘duty as a parent’, which resulted into her escaping
the country and leaving the label of ‘Hitlers Daughter’ and just becoming ‘Heidi’. In this novel,
curiosity is explored entirely through themes.

In conclusion, Many of the characters in Hitlers Daughter show curiosity through themes in
perspective to the world. It is ultimately this curiosity that drives Heidi into finally telling her grand-
daughter, Anna, her story years later.