“And I think it will be a good thing if I write everything down, because I’m an unusual person. I don’t mean diary—that’s ridiculous for a trendy girl like me. But I want to write like a movie, because my life is like that and it’s going to become even more so.” 

Here, Doris introduces both the style of the book (semi-epistolary) and the importance of cinema’s role in her life, and in Weimar culture in general. The images she sees in film and the advertisements that accompany films create illusions of a glamorous life that Doris chases but can’t quite capture.

“True education has nothing to do with commas!”

Education affects an individual’s socioeconomic position within Weimar society and plays a significant role in the novel. Doris’s discontent with her socioeconomic status is a result of having no more than just a basic education, reflected in her inability to do the job of stenographer. Doris later realizes the intellectual differences between herself and Ernst and how, because of those differences, she stands to lose him and the lifestyle he makes possible.

“And I’ve been asking my mother why she as a high-class woman settled for this loser, and instead of slapping me she just said: ‘You have to belong somewhere after a while.’” 

Doris’s perspective on and relationships with men are fraught with prejudice and sexism. She blames men for a woman’s role in society and views men as puppets to be manipulated by feminine sexuality, so women can achieve a higher social status. Doris believes her mother is special and could have done better than her father, who is an unemployed, blue-collar worker.