The Judgement

"The Judgement" opens and closes with sentences that makes you believe the story is going to be somewhat happy. When you continue to read the story, you begin to realize that there is more sadness and confusion going on. In my opinion, Georg Bendermann was writing to his childhood friend, that was living in Russia. Georg did leave out important and positive life changes that he experienced but maybe he chose to exclude these details because he didn't want to make his friend (who wasn't as successful as Georg was) upset. Georg's mother passed away and tended to the family business with his father. His father seemed to be affected more by the loss of his wife and was making crazy accusations that he was writing to Georg's friend in Russia secretly. I also felt that Georg's father thought low of Georg, calling him a bad "cheating" friend and that Georg was trying to "cover up" or get rid of him. And I think this is the reason Georg ended up killing himself; he needed to escape his father because his father came off as insane and couldn't bear to take care of him.