East of the Rhine

The narrative of a man’s life is intertwined so tightly with the spirit of the times in which he lives that it is impossible to tell his story without exposing the stage upon which his life unfolds. The era in which our protagonist moves is materially quite different from our present situation. However, the one constant throughout time is the interior world of the human psyche. It is here in the realm of the person’s soul that the Zeitgeist, which tries desperately to conform our actions to proper norms of action, can on occasion and for certain events be overcome. This internal victory is rare, which accounts for the stability of societies and instructs us not to judge a person outside of his own times. In those instances when a man can step outside the bounds of his era, even briefly, the vista of new possibilities opens and relieves him of the plodding routine to which the times otherwise compel him.The author has tried to capture the essential features and expectations of the times in which our hero moved. For this end, he relied on ancient sources and commentary by modern scholars. A bibliography to help the reader find the sources and come to his own conclusions is included at the end. He makes no claim to any special insights that an anthropologist, archeologist, or psychologist would have. Rather, he appeals to the license that fiction writers enjoy to tell a plausible story.