
The titular character of Antonio Tabucchi’s Pereira Declares’ s, Pereira, and Gerd Wiesler, who plays a Stasi agent in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, undergo significant transformations in the course of these narratives. Both men learn to show their true emotions and each have a heart that cares for people. Both Tabucchi and Donnersmarck use vivid details in the narratives to evoke an emotional response from their audience. 

Some similarities include both main characters changing from the beginning to the end of each text. It showed that both men have hearts and actually care about people. Also both men also protected people. Pereira helped hide Rossi from the police and Wiesler grabbed the typewriter and hid that so that Dreyman wouldn’t get in trouble with the Stasi. Both main characters go against authority and kind of rebel in their own way. “Dr. Pereira's sense of decency pushes him into helping Monteiro Rossi and Marta, changing him from an intellectual who works for a pro-fascist paper into an active opponent of the regime” (Rogow, 1997). “Wiesler gets so involved in other peoples’s lives that he cannot do his job. From spying on Dreyman and Siedel, Wiesler slowly begins to intervene in their lives in ways they cannot know” (Bernstein, 2007). “Wiesler even personally removes the incriminating typewriter from Dreyman’s apartment before Grubitz can find it” (Bernstein, 2007). “Von Donnersmarck’s script follows a conventional treatment of character awakening and conversion to a more humane consciousness; indeed, much of the fi lm’s appeal resides in that change” (Bernstein, 2007). “Most of all, Wiesler’s transformation is the central piece of evidence in Dreyman’s debate with Hempf: people can and do change” (Bernstein, 2007).

What’s significant about these two texts is that they are both under a regime or a great power. In Pereira Declares, Portugal is under a facist regime. In The Lives of Others, East German citizens are under constant surveillance by the Stasi, or East German secret police. Both authors do appeal to emotion. “Coming from a nation that has known fascism directly, Tabucchi shows us the effects of dictatorship with chilling realism. Tabucchi describes fascism through its mundane horrors, the everyday oppression of a country where even a journalist like Dr. Pereira can't hear or read the real news, and has to rely on a cafe waiter whose friend has a radio that gets the BBC” (Rogow, 1997). “It narrates events that occurred in Lisbon from the end of July to the end of August of 1938, a period when Salazar’s regime reinforces its totalitarian ethos and envelopes Portugal into a seamless dictatorship that will last thirty-five cruel years more” (Pitol, 2005). “A film that depicts the power of art and artists to transform lives, the Stasi agents and government officials, for all their powers of surveillance, are utterly ignorant of and oblivious to the virtues of the arts and artists, and human nature” (Bernstein, 2007).  “The Lives of Others has been received as a serious reconsideration of the repressive nature of East German totalitarianism” (Creech, 2009).  “Dramatic story of state surveillance, political and artistic oppression, in which the sympathetic Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler rejects his oppressive role and engages in political dissidence” (Creech, 2009). 

Author and Director use a lot of details that have an emotional appeal. “Tabucchi is frequently categorized as a post- modern writer…highly self- conscious craftsman, acutely aware of the precedent set by previous practitioners of the literary forms with which he continues to engage but whose continuing viability he also calls into question. A widely and deeply read consumer as well as a careful and elegant producer of literature, Tabucchi is acutely aware of the implicit pact between author and reader, a pact he takes pleasure in exposing and undermining” (Klopp, 1997).  “A socialist carter had been shot down on his wagon in Alentejo and had drenched all his melons with his blood” (5). “Only then did he realize that the towel had come away all red with blood, Monteiro Rossi’s hair was sodden with it, his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Pereira slapped his cheek again, but Monteiro Rossi gave no sign of coming to. Pereira grabbed his wrist, felt his pulse. But life ceased to flow in Monteiro Rossi’s veins” (129). Donnersmarck appeals to our emotion when we watch Christa-Maria get hit by a truck and slowly die. Watching that scene caused the audience to feel great sadness and horror. “Fraught with the guilt of having informed on Dreyman in order to save herself, she commits suicide by running in front of a truck. Wiesler and Dreyman briefly stand in in mourning over her body” (Creech, 2009). It made you want to cry because she was a huge character in the movie and then she was just gone. Also you felt the love and emotion coming from Dreyman as he watched the women he loves die. Donnersmarck also does a great job of getting the audience to feel the emotions he is trying to convey in his film.

Both authors wanted their audience to feel like they were really there in the moment with the characters. So they used all the descriptive details so that in the audience’s mind they were there.  
