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The Prussian Officer: A Tale of Repression

The Prussian Officer tells the story of a Captain in the Prussian military and his orderly. Due to gambling debts, the Captain pursues a mediocre career in the military but remains tense and irritable. He feels sexual tension towards his young, handsome orderly and relieves it by physically beating the orderly, inflicting painful injuries. After enduring the torture, the orderly murders the Captain in a violent act before collapsing and dying himself from his wounds in the hospital.

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316 views1 page

The Prussian Officer: A Tale of Repression

The Prussian Officer tells the story of a Captain in the Prussian military and his orderly. Due to gambling debts, the Captain pursues a mediocre career in the military but remains tense and irritable. He feels sexual tension towards his young, handsome orderly and relieves it by physically beating the orderly, inflicting painful injuries. After enduring the torture, the orderly murders the Captain in a violent act before collapsing and dying himself from his wounds in the hospital.

Uploaded by

Chae
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Prussian Officer Summary

Lawrence's The Prussian Officer  is a tale from a military background dealing with the topic
of sexual repression. The narrative tells the story of a Captain and his orderly, whose tense
relationship escalates into their deaths. The Captain, born to a wealthy family, gambles all of his
money away and is left with no other choice than to pursue a mediocre career in military. He
does not get married, and even though he takes a mistress from time to time, it does not help him
to get rid of the tension and irritability that he so often seems to experience. On the other hand,
his orderly, Schoner, is a young handsome man, full of life, who is involved in a loving
relationship.
The Captain feels sexual tension towards the young soldier and tries to keep him occupied, in
order to prevent him from meeting with his ‘sweetheart’. He also relieves himself of this tension
physically, by beating the orderly up. The beatings the young man has to take lead to various
painful injuries. One day, blinded by pain, the physical and psychological torture, the orderly
decides he cannot take it anymore, and murders the Captain in a violent manner. Afterwards, due
to lack of fluid and the enormous pain, the young man collapses and dies in a hospital.
Ultimately, “the bodies of the two men lay together, side by side, in the mortuary.”

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