Hotel New Hampshire

---

• John Winslow Irving was born on March, 2nd, in 1942 in Exeter New Hampshire, USA. His father was a prof of russian history and his mother was a nurse
• He was dyslexic before that particular learning disability had been identified by name.  He says that he was an underdog and that he had to control the pace of everything
• He visited the Exeter Prep-School and in 1956, at the age of fourteen, he begins to write and to wrestle
• His stepfather, a Harvard graduate, taught history at the school

Werbung

• He has studied at the university of New Hampshire
• He participates in a foreign study program.  He studies in Vienna on the Institute for European Studies under Günter Grass
• In 1965 he acquires the wrestling-licence
• 1966 he his first son is born with his wife Shyla
• 1967 he gets his first job as a teacher at the Windham College in Vermont
• 1968 he publishes his first book Setting free the bears
• 1976 he is 34 years old and this is the last time when he participates in a wrestling-tournament
• In 1977 he works as an assistant professor of English at the Mount Holyoke College in Massachussetts
• 1978- his first success with his novel The world according to Garp which allows him to dedicate himself just on his work as a writer
• 1982 he marries his new wife Janet Turnbull who is his agent
• In addition to his work as a writer he works as a coach of wrestling at the Vermont Academy.  He also coaches his sons Colin and Brendan
• 1983 his son becomes the New-England-Champion
• 1989 John Irving withdraws himself at the age of 47 as the wrestling-coach
• 1991 birth of his third son Everett
• Today he lives in Vermont and Toronto

SETTING

The setting is laid in different kinds of hotels, cities and countries.  The first Hotel New Hampshire is located in the hometown Dairy, New Hampshire.  The second one is situated in Vienna (Austria) and the third one which is actually a fairy-tale hotel in Maine, which has earlier been the old Arthbutnot-at-the-See where Win Berry attract attention to Mary Bates for the first time during the summer.  After the stay in Vienna the family lives for a short period of time in hotels in New York.
The settings are very important for the development of each character.  Because of the different kinds of surroundings in a town or a metropolis the family is confronted with a lot of extraordinary people be it prostitutes, Freud the animal trainer or the radicals who they spend a space of their life with.  Besides the living in hotels contributes to the strong cohersion of the family.
Throughout these extraordinary persons they are formed and influenced. The characters, who are allowed to dream and be really mad in this novel, seem to be more unusual and extravagant for the reader.
The period of action spans the years 1939-1965.  The whole content is marked by the world war II and the postwartime.
In the period during 1939-1943 the novel deals rather more with the past of the parents, the Arthbutnot-at-the-See, Freud, the 1937 Indian and the bear Earl.
In the year 1950 the story of the whole family actually starts when the first Hotel New Hampshire is remodeled.  The book ends in the year 1965 when every character finds its own personality.
 
 
 

STORY
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving is a hilarious family history with its own wisdom and mythology.
It talks about the life of the family Berry which is formed by the hard and injust beatings of destiny:
In the whole book the family Berry with its five children Frank, Franny, John, Lilly and Egg, its farting dog, the bear called Earl and the grandpa Iowa Bob stand in the centre of the story.  It deals with the development of the characters which seem extraordinary due to the unusual surroundings in different kinds of hotels and countries:

The book starts with the realization of the father's illusion of leading and living in a hotel which is conjured up by his work at the hotel Arthbutnot-at-the-See in the past during his studies. In their small hometown Main they convert the Thompson Female Seminary School to a hotel which is called the Hotel New Hampshire.  During this time and within this environment a lot of things happen which are important for the development through the book:
Franny, the second child gets raped and meets the black football player Junior Jones who later on turns out to be her husband.
The homosexuel Frank develops his weakness for uniforms and stuffings and uses his task to stuff their dog Sorrow which has got distrastrous consequences:  On Christmas Old Iowa sees the dangerous looking dog and gets an heartattack.  John, who is in love with his sister starts to weightlift due to the fact of his helplessness when his sister gets raped. A family doctor discovers that Lily suffers from smallness.
In the summer of 1958 the family Berry sells the hotel to a circus and leaves the United States to go to Vienna.  Win Berry, the father wants to open a new hotel with an old friend Freud who he has worked with at the Arthbutnot-at-the-See.
On the way to Austria the mother and the deaf Egg have a planewreck.
Vienna and the Gasthaus Freud which is later on called the Second Hotel New Hampshire turns out to be very different than Maine.  The family is confronted with a lot of unusual characters.  In the lower level of the hotel live prostitutes who wake up the hotel every night because of the fake screams.  The upper level is rented by some radicals who have nicknames like Miss Misscarriage.   Due to the danger in Vienna the householder of the hotel is the lesbian Susie who is disguised as a bear and has got the function to frighten people.  By the way she is also the guide dog of the blind Freud.
In Vienna the rest of the family Berry is involved in an attack on the State Opera which is initiated by the radicals.  The family masters the situation and spares the city of a big misfortune. They are celebrated as heroes but during the fight with the radicals Freud dies and Win Berry gets blind.
This incident is the release of the return to America, New York.  In New York they meet accidentially Chipper Dove, Franny's rapist:  they set up a trap to take revenge.  They miss him an  unforgettable lesson by pretending a rape by Susie who is disguised as a bear.
At this time the family has reached a turning-point.  All the members of the family start to live their own life and everyone takes different ways:  Franny turns out to be an actor and marries Junior Jones.  Lilly writes a book about the family history and becomes famous.   She fails with her second novel and realises her disadvantage of being small and commits suicide and Frank strives for a career as a manager.  The father Win Berry doesn't want to give up the life in a hotel.  John stays with his father and restores the old Arthbutnot-at-the See and acts as if it is a hotel but he leaves his blind father in his lucky beliefs.
Instead Susie the bear uses the Last Hotel New Hampshire as a life-crisis-centre for raped women.  John marries Susie and they both adopt the still unborn child of Franny and Junior Jones.
 
 

PLOT
The Hotel New Hampshire is a novel of an exceptional family following a mad dream to run three private hotels between New England and Vienna.  The injust fate always catches them up and fetches the family back to reality.  They master all the difficult situations by the strong cohersion and due to the fact that they believe in hope and never give up.
They live a life marked by private hotels, the career as a writer, the contact to radicals, the love of siblings, homosexuality, Freud and the love and present of bears.  Sex always plays a central role in the novel and is always present in the development of the characters, basically as the most normal thing of the world.
 

POINT OF VIEW
The lives of the Berry family members are seen through the eyes of John.  He tells the story as a witness in the first person.  This has the advantage that it is similar to that of our real life.  He narrates everything in detailed description and   puts even breathing life into the most unimportant characters.  By the way a richness of background is given that the reader can form an intense connection with the time and place and with the characters and their desires and thoughts.  The reader can put himself into the situation of each character.
John just takes the position of an observing narrator but he tries to explain and interpret all the actions of the characters.
 

CHARACTERIZATIONS
In the novel Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving all the characters are very interesting.  They are grotesque but something makes them real.  Every character is in a way crazy but they all differ from each other and their description, the energy that they radiate and the atmosphere of the surroundings and actions underline the different personalities.
One of the most important characters is the father, Win Berry:
He is a dreamer.  His life runs tragically that the reader might just pity him.  In his whole life he behaves (unconsciously that he might hurt his wife and his family) selfishly towards his family.
In the first years of their marriage he had preferred to follow his dreams which were clearly more important than anything else.  He had left his pregnant wife with her other children at home in Dairy.  He had even missed the birth of Franny.  Either he had been at the war, at Harvard or especially on the road with the 1937 Indian motorcycle and his bear State ‘o Maine/Earl.  Not until he gets an offer as a headmaster at the Dairy school he shows a little bit of responsibility.  He accepts the position because it means that he can live with his family.  But shortly afterward he notices that he is not satisfied with the common life.  He has a bad habit of living-in-the-future-and-not-enjoying-today.  Besides he is still formed by his dream of having either a hotel or a bear (cf:  If father could have bought another bear, he wouldn't have needed to buy a hotel!)  He remodels the old Thompson Female Seminary into a hotel without any consideration towards his family.  He is very inconsiderate because a few years later he gets a letter of his old friend Freud and decides to run another hotel in Vienna.  He doesn't bear in mind that the whole family has to leave their home, their friends and that they have to learn a new language.  The reason for this fact is that he has a very optimistic philosophy:  he sees everything in a positive way, even when his daughter gets raped he thinks that this might be her luckiest day.
When his wife dies on the way to Vienna he acts more irresponsible towards his children than before.  He can't digest the death and it seems that he looses his character.  This is the first time he shows his sentimentality.  He suffers so much that his children don't recognize him as a person.  They just notice his physical presence.
There are only a few moments and situations that bring him back to reality.  When a customer of the hotel accuses him of exposing his children he realizes that he is guilty and that his children don't live under normal conditions ( between prostitutes and radicals.)  He recognizes his failures and wants to get a job.
The day when the radicals prepare the attack of the theatre he even becomes a hero.  He defends his daughter Franny and kills the radical Ernst.  He turns out to be blind but at least he is in charge and his children start accepting him as a father. After this incident they go to New York where he relapses into his dreams.  He has an illusion of a new hotel and John makes his dream come true.  Win Berry believes that this is the Last Hotel New Hampshire and by exercising with his son and having a walk with his fourth guide dog his life is kind of fulfilled.

Franny is the first daughter of Win Berry.  The novel reveals that she is a very beautiful girl.  Even in her childhood she is already very pert and acts very intuitive by showing her direct manner.  Her self-confidence has an imperious effect on her siblings.  Even though Frank is older than her she takes the leading role.  Therefore she doesn't have such a good relationship to him than to her younger brother John.  But still this doesn't mean that their cohersion is impaired.  When Frank gets beaten up the siblings hold together and Franny appears very bravely by helping him.
She is the first girl who is allowed to go to the Dairy School which has been a strict boys school and even there she is respected and accepted by the others.
On Halloween she goes through her first bad blow and gets raped by three football players of her school.  One of them is called Chipper Dove who she is in love with.  Right after this incident she reacts very humiliated but she is too proud to admit the rape and represses it (cf:  They just beat me up).  She recovers herself in a short period of time and develops a very curageous attitude towards the rape by deciding not to decay in self-pity.  She is supported by her new friend Junior Jones who wanted to prevent the rape. (cf:  They didn't get the fucking me in me!)  Franny mostly appears very reserved and tries not to show any feelings.  The only time she reveals her feelings is when Chipper Dove comes into play, because she thinks that she still loves him.
After the death of her mother and Egg she acts very obliging and reasonable.  When she sees the changes and the grief of her family she decides to take care of them. (cf:  Franny was our leader, when she was lost we were all lost).
-Sex plays a central role in the novel and that's why she is very unrestricted like the whole family.  In Vienna she turns out to be a lesbian for a short period of time.  She becomes friends with Susie the bear, who has also been raped before, and they develop a closer relationship.
She also has sex with a radical just because he reminds her of Chipper Dove and finally in New York she has sex with her brother John due to the fact that  they both have always wanted to make love with each other.  Actually they want to test each other if they are in love and Franny wants to protect themselves of destroying themselves.  She knows that there is no future in their relationship (cf:  …that pain would convince us both that awaiting us in this particular pursuit of each other was a certain self-destruction.).  But  in general they still have a good relationship:  they also tell each other everything about their other sexual relationships, they talk about who they have a fancy for and how they should make love.
Still in New York Franny's behaviour changes.  She reveals a kind of weakness when Chipper Dove appears.  Therefore Franny seems for the first time insecure and frightened but she masters the situation with the help of her siblings and Susie by taking revenge on him.
An the end of the novel Franny becomes a star-actor.  She marries the lawyer Junior Jones and gets very famous.

John is the younger brother of Franny.  He has a very good relationship to his sister who he falls in love with:  He adores her and therefore he is very humiliated when she is raped.  He has a guilty conscience because he couldn't help her and due to the fact he starts to exercise and weightlift to prevent that this could happen again. (cf:  I never wanted to feel again the helplessness of another Halloween!)  He is very disciplined and doesn't even neglect his training when the weather is bad.  Also for him sex plays a central role.  He has sex with almost every girl that appears in the novel be it the servant Ronda Ray, the radical Misses Fehlgeburt, the prostitutes or his own sister.
He is very sentimental because by realizing the tragic fate of his family he begins to cry.  He is not very demanding and is contented with his life by caring for his father, being married with Susie the bear and adopting Franny's child.
 
 

The other characters are not as important.
The oldest child Frank is a weird character.  He is homosexual, doesn't have any friends and has a favour for uniforms and loves to stuff dead animals:  In the night when Franny is raped he starts to stuff the dead dog Sorrow who he disfigures so bad that the grandfather Coach Bob gets a heartattack at first sight and dies.  After the death of his mother and Egg he reacts very frustrated and changes his attitude.  From this follows that he appears very pessimistic. (cf:  After mother and Egg went away, Frank went ever farther away-somewhere-he went into a religion more vastly lacking in seriousness than even the established religions; he joined a kind of anti-everything sect.)  Contrary to the belief of Franny and John he gets later on very famous.  He turns out to be an agent and manages his sister Lilly.
 

Lilly, the youngest daughter is a pessimist.  She is very thoughtful and not self-confident at all due to the fact that she doesn't grow .  She is very fascinated by writing and is very successful with her first book Trying to grow which contains the whole story of the family.  Her second book fails and therefore she commits suicide and ends up as the King of Mice.  (She didn't keep passing the open window)

The mother and Egg are not that important because they die during the course of action.  Egg is also kind of weird and is attracted to uniforms and the stuffed Sorrow.  He is deaf and therefore isn't really respected by the other members of the family.  The mother is maybe the most realistic   person in the novel.  She is not filled with enthusiasm about the illusion of her husband but she tolerates and supports him.

John Irving