The Immortality of Hate

"Light is not always just light..." passage of pg. 38

         As Anton listens to the mysterious, later called "Communist rebel" woman, it becomes apparent that Mulisch uses her character to express the complexities of hate. Often hate is seen as a an encompassing negative emotion, but the Unnamed Woman expands on loathing, "We hate hate itself, and for this reason our hate is better than theirs." By creating juxtaposition between hate and love, the reader begins to understand that hate can instead have a positive connotation of an amalgamation of passion and fierce motivation. Through "hat[ing]...in the name of the light", hope and determination is born.
          The Unnamed Woman attempts to even further the comparison of love and hate by speaking of poetry, "I wanted to write a poem comparing...love to light." Her need to write implies the need for her thoughts to be real, tangible almost, and develops a strange sense of metafiction in the novel. It is almost as if Mulisch's theme in the work is the interconnectedness of memory and language; the dichotomy of love and hate, light and darkness, hope and despair, and its immortal pursuit as passed down by story tellers.