The last excerpt is from Lela Petala-Papadopoulou’s novel Καρτερώντας την άνοιξη [Waiting for the spring, 1985] and manifests a remarkable shift in the representation of the motives of someone who becomes a wartime fout. As it was stressed at the beginning of this chapter, authors of the previous decade treated the issue of wartime collaboration in a superficial way and portrayed their fout characters as a mere handful of pathetic individuals whose motivations for collaborating with the enemies were all but ideological. Either due to fear or self-interest, innate cowardice or inherent malice, all fout characters in the texts of the previous decade are presented to have cooperated with the occupation forces for a number of reasons that are
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First, the fout continue to be depicted with unattractive and beast-like features, a common strategy in books for young readers which -as it has been pointed out elsewhere in this study- aims to render the fout characters as repulsive as possible, prevents identification with the wrongdoers and provides the young reader with a ‘permission to hate’. At the same time, however, authors of the second period of the metapolitefsi shifted away from the schematic approaches of the previous decade. The representation of the fout is now far more realistic while moral condemnation is no longer the only concern on the authors’ agenda. Authors of the 1980s, moreover, took a more complex approach to the issue of the motives of someone who becomes a wartime fout. Greed and self-interest are still the main forces that drive the fout to collaborate with the occupation authorities and to turn against their compatriots in more or less radical ways. Apart from those, however, there also exist darker reasons for supporting the enemies. Naziphile sentiments and admiration for the ostensibly superior culture of the Third Reich are among the reasons that now motivate some of the fout characters. Authors of the 1980s –albeit not all of them and not in an equally direct manner- touched upon this unsettling aspect of collaboration which had hitherto remained unexplored in young peoples’ fiction. And although one cannot speak of a
First, the fout continue to be depicted with unattractive and beast-like features, a common strategy in books for young readers which -as it has been pointed out elsewhere in this study- aims to render the fout characters as repulsive as possible, prevents identification with the wrongdoers and provides the young reader with a ‘permission to hate’. At the same time, however, authors of the second period of the metapolitefsi shifted away from the schematic approaches of the previous decade. The representation of the fout is now far more realistic while moral condemnation is no longer the only concern on the authors’ agenda. Authors of the 1980s, moreover, took a more complex approach to the issue of the motives of someone who becomes a wartime fout. Greed and self-interest are still the main forces that drive the fout to collaborate with the occupation authorities and to turn against their compatriots in more or less radical ways. Apart from those, however, there also exist darker reasons for supporting the enemies. Naziphile sentiments and admiration for the ostensibly superior culture of the Third Reich are among the reasons that now motivate some of the fout characters. Authors of the 1980s –albeit not all of them and not in an equally direct manner- touched upon this unsettling aspect of collaboration which had hitherto remained unexplored in young peoples’ fiction. And although one cannot speak of a