Victims of life die; victims of death live. Harry Mulisch, in The Assault, creates one terrible incident leaving a Nazi collaborator dead, which directly leads to the deaths of many more people-all being victims of life's circumstances. By creating this episode-the assault-Mulisch indirectly defines "victims of death" as the people who continue to be haunted by the repercussions of death. Furthermore, Mulisch uses love, symbolized by Truus Coster, to contrast the disturbing consequences of mortality. Two characters bound to Truus, Anton Steenwijk and Cor Takes, represent the primary victims of death, suffering the most from the assault because of their contrasting connection to love. Essentially, Mulisch implements the idea of victims of death to assert that the tragedy of losing loved ones results in haunting effects and that love deepens these effects. Mulisch makes a statement about love: to love is the pleasant vice that aggravates a deeper depression for wartime survivors, the victims of death.
             Moreover, Mulisch effectively includes an anecdote about Dickens in the novel to clearly show the meaning and importance of contrast:
             Every Christmas Eve [Dickens] gave a party for his friends. The fire was lit, the candles burning, and as they sat around their roast goose, they would hear outside the window in the snow, a lonely wanderer stamping his feet and waving his arms to keep warm. Every now and then the poor man would exclaim, 'Ho hum hum, what bitter cold!' He was of course hired for the purpose, to emphasize contrast. (123)
             Here, the warmth and comfort in the room is intensified because of the contrast of a desperately cold wanderer. By reversing the perspective to that of the cold man, however, the harshness of the freezing weather is intensified, as the warmth of the room contrasts the "bitter cold" (123). This perspective-the cold watcher-is the perspective Mulisch utilizes to descr...