The Shawl: A Horrible Picture Of The Holocaust.

Cynthia Ozick is an American-Jewish writer from New York, Ozick born from Russian parents who migrated to America. Ozick has won many of her profession top awards and according to many writers she is one of the three greatest living writers of the English language. At young age Cynthia found it brutally difficult to be a Jew living in Bronx. She remembers having thrown rocks at her, being called “ Christ killer” and often humiliated in school. Her short story The Shawl makes it one of her most powerful works as the story provides a clear picture of struggles during the holocaust and the suffering Jews faced during that horrible time period.

Ozick introduces important details on the struggles Jews had to face during the Holocaust, which many relate to “hell on Earth”. "The Shawl" offers a glimpse of the past from which we must learn, into an event we must always remember. Those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it. By acknowledging the indescribable horror of that past, we become more resistant, less tolerant, more watchful, so that we will never again witness such human slaughter.

In this story Ozick talks abouts the struggles Rosa faced to keep her baby Magda alive, due to the lack of food. Although she knew Magda was not going to live for long, she managed to keep her alive with “the shawl” which in the story haves a symbolism of life. The magical shawl fed baby Magda after Rosa ran out of milk,” Magda took the corner of the shawl and milked it instead. She sucked and sucked, flooding the threads with wetness. The shawl’s good flavor, milk of linen”(Ozick 742). The shawl could feed a baby for three days and three nights.

Although the author failed to provide good information on the setting of the story, it is k...

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...a under the Shawl; the magic shawl that kept Magda alive. The central crisis of The Shawl starts right after Stella stole the shawl from Magda because she was cold. “ But she was always cold, the cold went into her heart” (Ozick 743). Meaning she did not care what could happen to Magda, she only care about herself. After Stella took the shawl for warmth, Prompting once-mute Magda to toddle wailing into the roll-call arena, where Rosa, relieved by Magda's newfound voice, observes her child's imminent death. stifling her desire to cry out and thereby preserving her life. Magda's finding her voice is redemptive, even as it brings about her death (Rabin). The reader understands that after the shawl was taken away from Magda a guard saw her and threw her into the electric fence, providing a good understanding that indeed the magical shawl was the one keeping Magda alive.