Analysis Of Daniel's Story By Carol Mats

Death. It’s how all life inevitably ends. Every human being on this Earth will eventually be gone, and there is nothing that can change or stop this terrifyingly truthful fact. 151,600 people die each day, and each of these losses affects multiple people, leaving them permanently altered. Death changes people, it’s not something that can easily, if ever, be forgotten. During the Holocaust 11 million people died. Every life was taken, taken out of pure evil and for no reason other than disgusting hatred. Taking all those lives also ripped apart all the people who loved the 11 million victims. Daniel was constantly reminded of all this loss and death that surrounded him. In Daniel’s Story by Carol Matas the experiences that have the greatest

When Daniel encounters this poor man frozen on the ground he admits, “What upset me the most was that I wasn’t shocked”(62). After all the death and inhumanity Daniel has observed in Lodz, he is ashamed that he has become desensitized to death. He knows he should looks at this body and feel sorrow, but he isn't affected by it. Infact when he finds the dead, helpless man, all he wants to do is take the “wood” (62) from the building where the man will rot away and use it to help himself and his family. Although it may be noble to try to save the people he loves with the precious wood, only thinking about the wood when a man is dead, shows how the sheer quantity of death that Daniel has seen in Lodz has made him immune to having the emotional capability to feel grief. In Judaism, sitting shiva is a common way to mourn relatives, and death is a very momentous ordeal. Although this man is not his relative, Daniel still doesn’t feel despair. He has temporarily lost his sympathy for the innocent people who have been killed. However he didn’t lose this part of his identity by choice, the Nazi cruelty stole it from