Heinrich Böll’s attack on the corruption of modern journalism and the values of the German people in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum is articulated in the novel’s structure. Böll’s use of extended metaphor, textual format, narrator interjection and other aspects of structure help facilitate his attack on modern journalism and German society.
Böll uses the entire second chapter to introduce his metaphor of channels, drainage and fluidity of knowledge. This channel metaphor reoccurs and is interwoven throughout the novel and adds a depth to the novel that would be lacking in the absence of the metaphor. Böll refers to “puddles” as metaphoric representations of combined knowledge from different sources. Böll speaks of four main sources from which these “puddles” spring: major sources, minor sources, leakages, and disjointed sources. Major sources are described as “the transcripts of the police interrogation; Hubert Blorna (attorney); and Peter Hach (public prosecutor)” (p.1, Chapter 1). The minor sources are not listed but they are the minor characters that contribute their own “bias, bewilderment, and testimony” (p.1, Chapter 1). A few are Else Woltersheim and Katharina’s neighbors, all of whom add their own relevancy to the novel. The leakages are referred to as “subterranean streams” by Böll; these are leaks of information in the police department and investigation team. The disjointed sources are sources that do not fit properly with the other sources; phone conversations, interviews, and word of mouth are examples of this; they cannot be used in the court as sources against a person. Using these sources to fill the “puddles” of knowledge of the event, the narrator allows the story to flow from puddle to puddle by making connections between the areas of knowledge that the puddles represent. The overall effect allows the reader to see the consequences of particular aspects that are known to occur in a particular puddle. The result is water from one puddle...