50 pages • 1 hour read
Jenny ErpenbeckGo, Went, Gone
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Richard
When the novel begins, Richard has just retired from a university where he was a philology professor. His wife has been dead for several years and he now has an abundance of time. The early chapters of the novel show Richard adjusting to his mundane routine of chores, meals, working in his garden, reading, and watching the lake. Richard is a highly trained academic whose perspective is often shaped by the Greek myths. When he sees a man with golden shoes, for instance, he immediately thinks of him as Hermes, the Greek messenger god with winged shoes.
When he finds himself drawn to the refugees, he is surprised. As he begins interviewing them, he tells himself that it is because he is going to write about them. But the more he hears, the more genuine his desire to help them becomes. As his relationships with the refugees deepen, he finds himself less suited to some of his former acquaintances, ignorant people like Monika and Jörg. Richard is an example of a well-intentioned person whose efforts—researching immigration, allowing Osarobo to visit him, giving Ithemba a ride to see his lawyer—still amount to little progress for the men, in legal terms of their citizenship. He is educated enough to see the Byzantine nature contradictions of immigration policy, but this also makes him acutely aware that the law cannot be changed with emotions. By the end of the novel, he is allowing refugees to sleep in his house and has enlisted his friends to help as well.
Rashid
Rashid is a refugee. After meeting him, Richard writes: “(Rashid = the Olympian = the Thunderbolt hurler” (91). He sees Rashid as Zeus, the head of the Greek pantheon who threw lightning bolts. Rashid is more outspoken than many of the other refugees. He lost his two children on the way to Europe when the boat capsized and they drowned. When the police come to Spandau to move them to a less suitable location, Rashid threatens to fight back and to blow up the building. He shouts that he has had enough, vocalizing what the others feel, but do not say. Rashid tries to lead another protest at Oranienplatz by building an igloo after the government reneges on its agreement with him. Rashid’s attempt to light himself on fire in protest shows both his commitment to public protest as a vehicle for change and to a psyche that is growing increasingly erratic under the pressures of their situation. He wants only to work, even telling Richard that working is as natural as breathing for him.
Osarobo
Osarobo is an 18-year-old refugee from Ghana. He and Richard bond over music. When Richard asks him what he would like to do, if he could have any ability, he says that he would like to learn how to play the piano. Richard has a piano and begins inviting him over for lessons. Osarobo dutifully practices the exercises that Richard gives him but is also interested in improvising his own melodies. When Richard buys him a keyboard that can be rolled up, Osarobo is grateful. When he goes to Italy in order to procure papers for his potential work permit, Osarobo notices that any time he sits down next to someone on a bus or train, the person moves away. He despairs that everyone thinks that every black man is a criminal. When Richard returns home from his lecture, his house has been broken into. Osarobo knew he was going to be away, but it is never proven that he was the thief. However, each time Richard tries to contact him for another piano lesson, post-theft, Osarobo declines to meet with him. It can be argued that he was the one who broke in and robbed Richard.
Awad
Awad is another refugee at the home. His mother died giving birth to him, and he lived with his grandmother until he was 7. Then he went to live with his father in Tripoli and became an auto mechanic. His father was shot when Awad was a teenager, as men from Gaddafi’s army ransacked their offices. Awad is put on a boat by the soldiers, along with many other refugees, and told that he will be shot if they try to swim back. He tells Richard that being a foreigner takes away a person’s choices, and that war has destroyed his sense of identity: “I can’t see myself anymore, can’t see the child I used to be. I don’t have a picture of myself anymore” (63). When he reached Oranienplatz, he could not believe that it was where he was going to have to live, in a tent. But he says he will never forget the place because it led him to the other refugees, whom he loves.
