Die Möglichkeit, die mehr Möglichkeiten übrig ließ

Die Möglichkeit, die mehr Möglichkeiten übrig ließ is the narrator’s name for choosing to keep a future open: if he does not kill himself today, he can still do so tomorrow, whereas death today would remove tomorrow’s choice. The expression gives a compact form to the novel’s recurring distinction between not wanting to live and deciding to die, while leaving Frieder’s eventual death—and the reasons for his earlier attempt—unresolved.

Meaning and Form

The phrase turns a life-or-death decision into a comparison between possibilities. The narrator’s logic is deliberately asymmetrical: postponement preserves choice, while suicide ends the capacity to choose. Its plain, almost procedural reasoning does not make the situation easy or safe; it records a way of holding open another day when certainty is unavailable.

That idea is echoed in Frieder’s own distinction between not wanting to kill himself and no longer wanting to live. The difference matters because a death wish does not, by itself, explain whether someone will act, or what they might want from another person in a crisis. The expression resists collapsing those states into one settled intention.

Frieder and the Uncertainty of Rescue

Frieder tells the narrator that he may rescue him if he is suddenly in danger, adding that he wants to make that decision for himself. His answer allows for rescue without turning it into a standing instruction or proof that the danger has passed. The narrator also recalls Frieder’s claim that a person who wonders what will happen without him believes his presence matters; that thought sits beside, rather than erases, Frieder’s suicidal thinking.

At home, the others cannot tell what Frieder is about to announce. He might have resolved never to try again, or he might have decided to die that day. The narrator cannot reliably read the signs: sadness might mean tiredness, and sudden good spirits might signal a decision to die. The possibility expressed in the title is therefore not a comforting formula for those watching him. It names the narrator’s own reasoning while the people around Frieder remain unable to know what he has chosen.

Repetition, Revelation, and Aftermath

The expression acquires a harsher meaning after Frieder tells the narrator that he deliberately provoked the police officer to shoot him. The narrator responds by striking him and insisting that Frieder should not pull the others into his attempt. This confrontation reveals the gulf between leaving an option open for oneself and making other people bear the danger of an action. It also shows that the narrator’s language of choice coexists with anger, fear, and a demand for responsibility.

After Frieder’s successful suicide, the narrator revisits the question of why he had tried to kill himself the first time. Talking with Frieder had made the question fade until it seemed to disappear, but that disappearance never supplied an answer. The narrator cannot establish whether Frieder’s motives were the same on the two occasions. He returns instead to the logic of postponement: not acting today leaves tomorrow available; acting today closes it. The final movement between “Not important” and “Not unimportant” keeps that reasoning from becoming a neat resolution. The expression preserves a possibility, not an explanation of Frieder or a claim that postponement guarantees survival.