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The i Tetralogy

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The i Tetralogy ~ Mathias B. Freese ~ Hats Off Books ~ History: Fiction

Combining true to life characters, believable settings and a peek into the psychology of all those involved, The i Tetralogy provides a descriptive, disturbing and graphic account of fictional history.

The i Tetralogy, consists of four volumes; i, I am Gunther, Gunther's Lament and Gunther Redux. Written from the perspective of three key characters; the Jewish prisoner, the executor and the murderer's son, this is a bleak, but powerful and graphic fictional perspective of the effect the Holocaust had on each character. It also focuses on the legacy it left behind.

Beginning in Europe in the mid-1940's, we visit the grim, weary life of a death camp prisoner as he silently digs the latrines, deprived of the dignity and humanity he was once accustomed to. This is a heart-rending account of one man's inner strength and resilience, despite a weak and decaying body; and how he learns ways of being vigilant and obedient in order to avoid death.

When volume two, I am Gunther, begins, the reader will be taken aback with the change of attitude. Seeing life as a German guard, Gunther, debating the suffering and cruelty he subjects the prisoners to, on behalf of his country. Yet among his ludicrous beliefs and ideals of superiority, one can't help, at times, feeling sorry for him, as a lost human being stuck in a world gone mad.

Half a century later, Gunther's Lament, follows the aging Nazi, Gunther, to a suburban town on Long Island. Here we explore deeper into his wrecked and warped mind as he struggles to come to terms with his very existence, without the security the war gave him as a German guard with power.

In Gunther Redux, the story continues as it investigates the views and thoughts of his son Conrad, who is tormented by his father's 'previous life' and burdened by the damaging truths of what really went on inside the death camps.

It is hard for the human mind to comprehend the full horror of the Holocaust. Telling the story through three key characters, however, provides a vivid insight into this inexplicable and shocking period of history. When I finished the book I found myself asking all sorts of questions; how did the dominant and brutal leader, Hitler, convince the Germans that they were the superior and most powerful race with such devastating effectiveness? Why did they believe in him? Can ordinary people be convinced to accept instructions to behave without decency and humanity under the right circumstances? Although this is a work of fiction, the characters are extremely true to life. The setting is so believable it almost reads like an autobiography of these three different people, making it an astounding, descriptive piece of well written prose.

The final section titled Raison d'Etre provided many answers to my questions, whilst giving me a greater understanding of Mathias B Freese's personal views and the psychological terror of all involved during (and after) this disturbing period of history.

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October 19, 2005

Written in first-person, readers are led through the complexity of human despair and survival. The i Tetralogy examines Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust during World War II and outcome of a civilization's arrogance of power.

I've read a lot about the Holocaust in history books and novels; I've seen movies like Exodus and Schindler's List, as well as television shows and miniseries like The Holocaust and Shoah, but not much can be compared to The i Tetralogy.

For the most part, many of us have trouble understanding how any one human; much less an entire nation could perpetuate the heinous crimes committed during the Holocaust.

Keep in mind that The i Tetralogy does not teach anything new. I don't believe it's meant to; I do however believe it's meant to illicit emotional response to a chilling subject, and that it does. Through its realistic characters, Freese immediately immerses readers in the experience of the Holocaust. They reflect the blood curl every human being is capable of. At the same time, reminding us throughout each page of how delicate and important our lives really are. Freese clearly presents the cold and callousness with which Nazi Germany planned to exterminate the Jews as one unbroken line that started from racism.

Unfortunately, the Holocaust did not change anything and genocide still occurs in the world, but there are lessons to be learned here regarding other genocides and ethnic wars and race and hate crimes.

The i Tetralogy is by far more than just another story about the Holocaust, its particular series of crimes, and the fact that it has come to stand for Evil Incarnate. It is a book, which needs to be, ingested contemplatively and certainly one that should be retained for repeated readings.

Reviewed by Betsie

Honest, abrasive and engaging... okay... enough with the Ney-Yorker-esque blurbs, even though they are true. Honestly, this is the most disturbing account of the holocaust I have ever read. If I didn't know any better, I would think Mathias B. Freese had gone through this experience himself.

Told in first-person, we are led through the tunnels of human despair and survival. Base human emotion, action and reaction are uncensored and laid bare, making The i Tetralogy more than just another novel about the holocaust. This book is an exploration of what a civilized human being is capable of when s/he is pushed and the resulting guilt (or lack of) we feel for our convictions. Not only in action, but in thought, this book reflects the horror we all have inside of us and reminds us of the fragility and importance of our lives.

Even if you've read Elie Wiesel's Night, Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, or others, this book will surprise you with raw language and emotive power.

in a time when genocides are happening in the sudan and parts of burma and north korea a book like this seems more relevant then ever. too often the nazi attrocities are glossed over as in movies like schindlers list and downfall. this book hits you in a gutteral way that all americans should experience. too many of us are oblivious to the plight of unfortunites in those countries as well as in our own. a great read overall.

"I am rectum." With these words, you become the nameless "i" being processed at a Nazi death camp in part one of "The i Tetralogy."

"I am Gunther." With these words in part two of the novel, you become the guard who efficiently processes the Jews.

"MIN-E-OLA. An American Indian name, no doubt, for a long Island as bland as an ironing board. But here in my Cape Cod, built after the war by the GIs who destroyed the Reich, I have found a measure of security." With these words you become the guard as an old man in the 1990s looking back on the wonders of his life in part three of Mathias B. Freese's masterpiece.

"I HATE HIM. I HATE HIM. I HATE HIM." With these words, you become Gunther's son in search of truths about the Jews, the war, his father, and himself that he may or may not find between the lines of the last 78 pages of this book.

"The i Tetralogy" places the living, breathing and dying moments of people trapped within the Holocaust beneath a microscope powerful enough to bring every visceral urge, fear, motive and drop of blood into an IMAX-theater-size view.

But make no mistake about it. While reading this novel, you are not viewing the Holocaust as a movie-goer or even as a reader: you are immersed in it and participating in it. Mentally, upon a shadowy sea of words, you are experiencing first hand a world outside boundaries of humanity as we understand it, or even want to understand it.

The unrelenting power of Freese's writing calls to mind the gritty horror and hopelessness of Erich Maria Remarque's World War I novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" and the grim insanity of Dalton Trumbo's story about a wounded soldier in "Johnny Got His Gun." Equally stark and eloquent, "The i Tetralogy" is written in the first person with a substantial amount of internal monologue. Both precise and beautiful, the prose cuts like a knife, laying bare the question: Where, if anywhere, is the meaning in the deadly embraces between prisoner and guard, guard and lover, guard and wife, guard and son, son and mother?

"We are dead men as it is, Izzy, i tells a fellow prisoner. "I believe there is no explanation for all of this, for if I were given one, I would dismiss it out of hand. We should stop trying to juggle it into sense or some order, some meaning. It is meaningless--and even that gives it meaning."

Gunther tells himself, "Here, in Anus Mundi, as one SS doctor calls it, I serve to kill Jews. Not a harsh thing to say or think, it's a necessary thing to do. Not a harsh thing to feel, for it has nothing to do with feeling--or morality.

Years late, after he learns of his father's role in World War II, Gunther's son Conrad, tells himself, "Of the six million Jews, in fantasy I wish I could replace each one--die the individual, idiosyncratic, special, even holy death of each one. I wish to be disfigured, raped, shot in the neck, gassed, torched. But this is fantasy. It speaks of intent or good will, of higher motives and purposes. But to what avail?"

Psychotherapist Victor Frankl, who survived a Nazi concentration camp wrote, in "Man's Search for Meaning," "A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the why for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any how."

Frankl's 1946 book makes a strong case for the ultimate meaningfulness of every moment of life, including moments of suffering and depersonalization. Freese's novel throws the whole matter open to question, leaving you to decide for yourself whether or not i or Conrad or you concur.

Freese's author's note, "Raison d'Ętre," is rather like a message in a bottle explaining how and why he wrote the book. "A close reading of 'The i Tetralogy,' a substitution of the author's name for i, Gunther, Karl, Conrad, Milly and Kurt," he writes, "will reveal the suffering of the species individually lived."

If you dare to walk or crawl 365 pages in these characters' shoes, you will emerge at the merciful end of this novel changed by the agony that, as Freese suggests in his author's note, made him aware." It is all too much, too much to bear--but bear it you must," he says. "It is a part of human suffering--and human strength."

If you read closely and bear each revolting moment, you may discover that through "The i Tetralogy," you have found both meaning and catharsis.

Auschwitz and its siblings produced victors and victims. Hitler and his kind produced demons and angels.

In the first part of The i Tetralogy we meet the rectum. He has long since lost his identity, tied as he is to Gunther the god of his world who has driven out the God of his youth. He is a slave, a dying collection of parts seeping, weeping and oozing from miserable life into living death.

All around him the rectum of the now becomes the brother, father, uncle and son of the night when the camp is silent and the ghosts beside him whisper in the darkness and relish their few hoarded crumbs of wormy, hard bread, the food that keeps them alive while they fester and suppurate and nurture a waning spark of intellect and philosophy, belief and humanity until the harsh, cold light of morning throws them back into the pits to work and await their turn to be released from the mindless and endless trenches and latrines beneath Gunther's polished leather boots, serpentine whip and cruel gloved hands that probe their souls with studied, graceful cruelty. They long for the release of death even as they cling with waning hope to life and dreams of freedom.

Years later Gunther stalks the streets of Minneola, New York far from his glory days under Hitler ever vigilant for any break in his cover that might brand him a war criminal, a designation he gleefully spurns, his defense always ready to hand. In his eighties, married to a shell of a woman he hollowed out decades before, sire of two sons he never fathered and secure in his memories of the good old days when he was a god, he relives his past in the basement of his bland American Cape Cod home through the trains that chug and cross the land of his youth and power carrying more Jews to the ovens and to his trenches and latrines. He wants to be discovered even as he carefully conceals himself behind a stolen name and fabricated life.

What is so disturbing about Freese's stories is not the horror of the camps or the soul wrenching tale of stolen lives and dreams plundered and hollowed out by Gunther's relentless hunt for the Jewishness of the Jewish soul, but the seductive and rational explanations Gunther gives for his actions. There is a kind of truth and honesty about Gunther's philosophy and reasoning that makes his deeds all the more horrific because they resonate in some dark corner of the mind and soul. Even as the poisonous seeds find fertile ground, they waken a moral sensibility that forcibly expels them in outraged denial. This is how Hitler, that pied piper of Germany, wove his magical snare to catch the hearts and minds of a nation and moved them beyond the confines of reason and morality into the dangerous territory where people become things and foul, unspeakable acts of inhumanity, the final solution that paved the road to hell on earth.

Freese weaves a dark tapestry of the soul that echoes inside of each of us and wakens not an impersonal evil but an all too human Beast with the face and manner of a hollow Hero.

This is not an easy read but definitely a worthwhile one. All books should not be written on a "Garfield" level. Life is not always neat and orderly, as history and this book have proven. I think this book will prove to be a classic.

This was not an easy book to read, but it was definitely thought provoking. It not only describes what prisoners in concentration camps went through, but also the thoughts and feelings of the gaurds working in the camps. These guards, which most normal people view as monsters, were also described as having "human" thoughts/feelings like all the rest of us have. I guess this is part of what makes the book so disturbing in addition to all the graphic violence, etc. Still it was definitely a good read.