The short story, “The Shawl,” written by Cynthia Ozick, recounts World War II by providing a very vivid image of a Concentration Camp in Nazi Germany. As one reads, he or she can see that Ozick does a wonderful job in portraying the hard times of Jews during the Holocaust. In the first paragraph, we meet the central characters, Rosa, Stella, and Magda as they attempt to endure the fears of life in the Nazi Concentration Camp. Rosa and Stella, her niece, are marching in a line to the camp with Rosa’s daughter, Magda, wrapped and hidden in a shawl from the German soldiers. Unfortunately, at the end, Stella takes Magda’s shawl, and German soldiers kill Magda by throwing her into an electric fence. Throughout the story, Cynthia Ozick has used symbolism like life, protection, and death to make the readers understand the thoughts and feelings of each character which makes the climax really important and meaningful.
A symbol is a sign or an object representing something abstract or invisible and more important or complex than the object itself. The author uses symbolism in this story to make the reader visualize the setting. The title, “The Shawl,” itself is a symbol in this story. Throughout the story, the shawl symbolizes the source of warmth and shelter for little Magda. In the story, Magda is described as “a squirrel in a nest, safe, no one could ever reach her inside the little house of the shawl’s windings” (Ozick 251). The shawl always behaves as an intimate friend which helps Magda in all her needs and gives support and condolence in danger situations. We also see that the shawl is the reason which helps “Magda to live longer than expected” despite of her poor health disorders in the Nazi Concentration Camp (Paul 2). As a result, we see that Stella give more important to the shawl, for she knows that it will provide her with all good things in bad conditions.
For Magda, the shawl is more than just protection since she sees the shawl as her “baby, her pet, and her little sister” (Ozick 252). According to Tery Griffin, a famous American editor
and essayist, the shawl entertains her like a friend “when the wind blew its corners” (Wilson 295). The shawl also represents sustenance, especially for Magda. Ozick describes it as “a magic shawl that could feed a baby for three days and three nights” (251).
It is interesting to read the connections of Night, by Elie Wiesel because they include the experiences of the Holocaust from other people's’ points of views. In A Spring Morning, by Ida Fink, it is shocking that the innocence has been stripped away from the child as the speaker reveals, “Fire years old! The age for teddy bears and blocks” (Wiesel 129). This child is born innocent, she has not harmed anyone, yet she has to suffer. Reading about the Holocaust is difficult, I wonder how others had the motivation to live during it. The description of a little girl getting shot is heartbreaking as the speaker explains, “At the edge of the sidewalk lay a small, bloody rag…. He [Aron] had to keep on walking, carrying his dead child” (Wiesel 133).
Symbolism is a literary device in which words, phrases or actions allude to something more than their literal meanings. In the short story “A Jury of Her Peers”, a major example of symbolism is the quilt. The quilt is perhaps the biggest example because it can be tied to many other examples of symbolism within the story, and can also be interpreted in different ways.
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Elie Weisel and his family, taken from their home along with hundreds of other Jews from their hometown, were brought to Nazi Germany’s Concentration Camps. “From this moment, you come under the command of the German army.any of you who is later found to have kept anything will be shot on the spot,” (Weisel 15). Even prior to entering Birkenau, Auschwitz, or Burma, the prisoners were forced to give up all belongings under the threat of death. In a godless and unloving environment, twelve-year-old Elie must now survive against all odds in a concentration camp. “You’re going to be burned”.
It is reported that over 6 million Jews were brutally murdered in the Holocaust, but there were a very few who were able to reach the liberation, and escape alive. There were many important events that occurred in Elie Wiesel’s Night, and for each and every event, I was equally, if not more disturbed than the one before. The first extremely disturbing event became a reality when Eliezer comprehended that there were trucks filled with babies that the Nazi’s were throwing the children into the crematorium. Unfortunately, the sad truth of the murdering babies was clearly presented through, “Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there, […] babies”, (Wiesel, Night, 32). This was one of the most disturbing events of the narrative for myself and truly explained the cruelty and torture of the Holocaust.
Since the publication of, Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the holocaust has been deemed one of the darkest times in humanity, from the eradication of Jewish people to killing of innocents. Wiesel was one of the Jewish people to be in the holocaust and from his experience he gave us a memoir that manages to capture the dark side of human nature in the holocaust. He demonstrates the dark side of human nature through the cruelty the guards treat the Jews and how the Jews became cold hearted to each other. Wiesel uses foreshadowing and imagery, and metaphors to describe these events.
In the 1940s, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, German soldiers caused great destruction throughout Europe. Elie Wiesel, a young boy at the time, was caught in the traumatic crossfire of the devastation occurring in that time period. The memoir, Night, tells the horrific stories that Elie Wiesel experienced. Elie was forced into concentration camps with his dad where he soon had to grow up fast to face the reality of his new life filled with violence, inhumanity and starvation, many of which he had never endured before. In Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, he validates his theme of violence and inhumane treatment toward Jews through the use of excessive force such as the brutal beating to show Eliezer that he should not have been roaming the camp and see Idek sleeping with the girl; killing in the camps for no reason to show the hatred toward the Jews; and the limited food portions to starve them and the constant psychological torture.
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel gives an in depth view of Nazi Concentration Camps. Growing up in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel, a young Jewish boy at the innocent age of 12, whose main focus in life was studying the Kabbalah and becoming closer in his relationship with God. In the memoir, Elie Wiesel reflects back to his stay within a Nazi Concentration Camp in hopes that by sharing his experiences, he could not only educate the world on the ugliness known as the Holocaust, but also to remind people that by remembering one atrocity, the next one can potentially be avoided. The holocaust was the persecution and murder of approximately six million Jew’s by Aldolf Hitler’s Nazi army between 1933 and 1945. Overall, the memoir shows
In The Shawl Rosa, her infant daughter Magda, and her fourteen year old companion Stella are Jews interned in a concentration camp during World War II. Amazingly the infant Magda has survived with her mother, hidden and protected in a shawl. If the Nazis ever learn of her existence she is certain to be killed. The Setting of this story sets the reader up for a sad story. Just by knowing the story takes place in a concentration camp, the reader immediately feels sorrow for these three characters. The story starts off with the 3 characters walking down a dirt path. The story is written in 3rd person limited, so you can only get into the characters thoughts at certain times. You can tell by Rosa’s thoughts of leaving Magda on the street for someone to find, that she is very disgruntled and not thinking very clearly. The story tells about Magda’s attachment to the shawl, and how it eases her and gives her peace. Throughout the walk down the road, you see that both Rosa and Stella are both envious of Magda’s ...
A symbol is when the author uses an object in the story to represent a greater meaning. The quilt is a symbol of the family heritage that can only be appreciated by certain people. It symbolizes a long line of relatives. As you pick up a quilt and look at it, it has several pieces of cloth that are sowed together. The Grandmother made the quilt by hand, which makes it very special.
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed…“(Wiesel 32) Livia-Bitton Jackson wrote a novel based on her personal experience, I Have Lived a Thousand Years. Elli was a Holocaust victim and her only companion was her mother. Together they fought for hunger, mistreatment and more. By examining the themes carefully, the audience could comprehend how the author had a purpose when she wrote this novel. In addition, by seeing each theme, the audience could see what the author was attacking, and why. By illustrating a sense of the plight of millions of Holocaust victims, Livia-Bitton Jackson explores the powerful themes of one’s will to survive, faith, and racism.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.
A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2009 Open-Ended Question for AP English Literature and Composition).
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Symbolism is your prospective of looking at an object or event. In the play “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Johan Ibsen there are objects and events that symbolizes people’s lives. We don’t see symbols in life; we only see them in novels and plays. In the play there are a lot of objects and events that symbolizes more than what they are. Like the Christmas tree is used for decorative purposes in real life, but in this play it can be compared to Nora Helmers feeling. Other symbols include of “The New Year”, “the title of the play” and “Nicknames” Torvald calls Nora. Although we don’t think about simple things, they might have a deeper meaning to it.