Across the Great Divide #14

    This entry is going to be specially dedicated to the subject of walls, more precisely, to the distinction between the East and the West side of Germany after the Berlin wall came down. In the following lines, I will attempt to account for the title of the article "Across the Great Divide" by Charles P. Wallace. I think we should consider what the author understands by "the great divide". If the Berlin wall has already been destroyed, why has the author chosen such a controversial title? We can presume that even though the physical barrier has disappeared, there may be another kind of division which is more symbolic. What's more, taking into consideration the basic meaning of the word "Across", which is from one side to the other, I believe that the author will provide a number of aspects which are relevant to the different realities of living on the West side or the East side of Berlin. 
    As regards the paratext of this article, there are some aspects to take into consideration. For instance, the most notorious things are the title and the photographs which show us different instances discussed in the text. In addition to that, the sub tittles serve the function of attracting the reader's attention by providing controversial phrases which were presented in the text. Without analysing the text from a bottom up approach, we can infer that it is about the differences of living in one side or the other side of Berlin. I have reached to this conclusion because of the following examples: 1- the two photographs on page 26 that demonstrate the different houses on the West and East side. 2- The quotes of people who were interviewed and their desire of coming back in time before the Wall collapsed. 3- The author's selection of words in the epigraph which indicate contrast such as antonyms (old - new, come together - split).  Regarding the semantic organisation of the paratext I can identify words of the same semantic field, undoubtedly, these words are related to division, such as "half", "split", "divided" and its counterpart "united", there are also words related to walls, such as "border", "barrier" and "concrete". Through out the whole text, there is repetition of words such as "wall", "East", "West", "Berlin". and "disappointment" since they have considerable importance in this topic. 
      Taking into consideration its macrostructure, I could find that paragraphs number 1 to 3 read about the two different ways of living (West vs East), paragraphs number 4 and 5 are related to its government (Social Democratic Party vs Conservative Christian Democratic Party), paragraphs number 6 to 9 deal with employment and insecurity in the West side vs East side, in paragraphs 10 to 12 the author explains the economic differences, and finally, in the last paragraph, number 13, the author concludes the article expressing most of the citizen's attitudes towards the falling of the wall.