Literature is sometimes written around important times in history. Klaus Mann, Richard Wright, and Toni Morrison all write novels around historic times. Mann wrote Mephisto, which dealt with the Nazi regime. Wright wrote about America in the 1930's, in regards to the desperate state of Black Americans. And Morrison wrote her novel on the traumatic time after slavery, reconstruction. All three novels express to us the feelings of the time.
             Some people just can not imagine how the National Socialist Party was able to take over on the miserable and offensive platform it stood on. Furthermore, how they were to be gain power in Germany with such cruel and oppressive practices and how managed to keep it. Klaus Mann's Mephisto answered a number of these questions for me. It did portray in a frighteningly matter-of-fact manner the social and cultural climate of that crucial time period, the dying years of the Weimar Republic and the early years of the Third Reich. The novel assured that the whole of Germany had not welcomed the Nazi takeover with open arms, no enjoyed the years spent living under the Reich. "Was it possible?" (156) Mann's character Hendrik wondered upon receiving the news of Hitler's appointment as chancellor.
             The blustering lout whom his brilliant and progressive friends had so often ridiculed had now suddenly become the most powerful man in the country! This is horrible, thought the actor Hendrik Hofgen. A hideous surprise. And I was absolutely positive that these Nazis were not to be taken seriously. What a fiasco! (156).
             Though Hendrik shows a somewhat naive faith in human nature or at any rate in the ability of Weimar government officials to resist Hitler's charismatic nature, it is somewhat comforting that these were the thoughts running through the minds of the Germans in 1933. They were not thinking, "our savior has come." Mephisto presents a dark...