Borchert's work was not famous during his early days, although there were many people who liked his poems and prose works. The war gave Wolfgang's writings an everlasting impression; it was characterized as one of the best war-literature. He employed the styles of Rainer Maria Rilke and Holderlin into his poems and short stories. Rilke tends to use metaphors, metonymy and contradictions which affected Borchert in that he utilized many metaphors in his writings such as Borchert's short story “The Kitchen Clock”. In the story, he used the clock as a metaphor that reminds him of his mother and his lost family. It has a great resemblance to trauma-literature. Then, comes Hölderlin's role in inspiring Borchert where Hölderlin was known for using symbols in his writings instead of labeling people and places with their known tags. And, again in “The Kitchen Clock”, Borchert uses symbols in describing characters, for example, describing the returning soldier in “The Kitchen Clock” he says: