Role in The Hiss Case
In 1929, Whittaker Chambers translated Der Abituriententag from German, published in English as Class Reunion.
During the trials of Alger Hiss in 1949, his defense team included in their attacks on Chambers' character the argument that Chambers was accusing Hiss out of a suggestion from Class Reunion.
In his memoir, Chambers wrote:
In Class Reunion, Dr. Carl Binger, the psychologist in the Hiss trials, undertook to discover the psychological clue to Chambers' "mysterious motives" in charging that Alger Hiss had once been a Communist. Chambers was the bad boy and Hiss was the good boy of Class Reunion, and the novel, unread by me for some twenty years, had put the idea of ruining Hiss in my mind -- why I never quite understood, since it always seemed to me that if I had been bent on ruining Alger Hiss from base motives, the idea might well have occurred to me without benefit of Franz Werfel. But to many enlightened minds Class Reunion became a book of revelation.
I have always held that anyone who takes the trouble to read Class Reunion without having made up his mind in advance, can scarcely fail to see that, if there are any similarities at all between the characters, it is Hiss who superficially resembles the bad boy and Chambers who superficially resembles his victim.
Read more about this topic: Class Reunion (1928 Novel)
Famous quotes containing the words role in the, role in, role, hiss and/or case:
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“This [new] period of parenting is an intense one. Never will we know such responsibility, such productive and hard work, such potential for isolation in the caretaking role and such intimacy and close involvement in the growth and development of another human being.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion and Dennie Palmer (20th century)
“Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The attention of those who frequent the camp-meetings at Eastham is said to be divided between the preaching of the Methodists and the preaching of the billows on the back side of the Cape, for they all stream over here in the course of their stay. I trust that in this case the loudest voice carries it. With what effect may we suppose the ocean to say, “My hearers!” to the multitude on the bank. On that side some John N. Maffit; on this, the Reverend Poluphloisboios Thalassa.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)