Anton's Family In The Assault By Harry Mulisch

Throughout Harry Mulisch’s The Assault, the killing of Anton’s family leaves Anton with internal questions as to how exactly this event transpired for most of his life. Over the course of the novel Anton is provided with many answers to his questions, some simple and some complex. As the novel progresses so does the complexity of explanations Anton is given about the assault on his family. To clarify, in the beginning Anton is offered many simple explanations and, seeing that he is young and his psyche is moderately fractured, Anton choses to believe these simple justifications for his family’s deaths. As the novel progresses, more complex explanations are offered to Anton causing long repressed emotions to surface leaving with him more questions than answers until he encounters Karin Korteweg for the first time in decades. Karin ultimately provides Anton with resolution about the events that transpired the night of the assault but in reality, the true depth of the assault can never fully be explained and no clear conclusion can truly be reached regarding the value of complexity. Simple explanations offer superficial justifications to Anton as to why his family died providing him with a false sense closure whereas Complex explanations deeply analyses multiple levels of the events that transpired ultimately leading …show more content…
Simple justifications -although not necessarily incorrect or false- simply lead to a conclusion without reaching deeper levels of analysis on each aspect of the assault; However, simple explanations do build on each other and each new simple explanation that is given to Anton adds more information on the murder of his family into his consciousness like piecing together a puzzle. Anton cannot fit the pieces together though without the aid of more complex explanations to fill in the