I think Gustl is very relatable. I, too, often have internal monologues. When I was a little girl, as the only child in the family, I was always kind of lonely. I would talk to my toys but as I grew older, I realised that that is actually very very strange. So I brought those conversations back into my head. It still seems rather abnormal, but technically it is just me thinking out loud, in my head, having internal monologues like Gustl. Internal monologues are nothing foreign to me.
On so many levels do I find Gustl relatable. I do agree that he has some attitude problems but that being said, I find it hard to deny how much of me I see in him. In fact, I think most of us are like Gustl. We are similar not in our personalities per se but the way we handle crisis.
Let us imagine that a son accompanies his mother on a grocery store run on behalf of his father who is still busy working. Imagine the son sitting in the passenger seat next to his mom who is driving. A reckless drunk driver crashes into the right side of the car where he is at. The first response his mother might most likely give will be to blame herself. And once she realizes that she had technically, nothing to do with the accident, she starts blaming other people like her husband, for example. I think we would all agree that this scenario is very much possible. I also think that it is similar to Gustl’s situation.
The baker points a knife at Gustl. Gustl uses his own abilities to rationalize something that did not even arise because of him. Therefore, when he starts to realize that he can do nothing to rectify the problem, he starts to put the blame on other people. This may seem selfish of him, but I think that it is a normal human response.
Overall, I find that Gustl deserves our sympathy. He is an Individual brainwashed by the norms of the environment he was in. But besides that, we do see that even with his ranks and everything, he is still very much like a regular human being.
