Analysis of Our Secret by Susan Griffin Throughout “Our Secret” Griffin explores the different characters’ fears and secrets and she gives specific insights into these “secrets”. Through examining others Griffin comes to terms with her own feelings, secrets, and fears. She relates to Himmler, Leo, Helene, and everyone else even though she is different than all of them. One fact that can be made about all of these characters is that they all represent humans and human emotion First, Griffin reveals that there is a hidden side to everyone that is only known within, and anything outside could be a false representation, or imposter. “I think of it now as a kind of mask, not an animated mask that expresses the essence of an inner truth, but a mask that falls like dead weight over the human face” (Griffin 349). This quote captures what she is trying to say about secrets being the barrier to others’ feelings. The mask Griffin talks about represents the barrier to the secrets. Having this mask shields what is on the inside. Griffin explores Heinrich Himmler and the secrets that are hidden within him. Throughout his childhood Himmler’s secrets and thoughts were hidden, overshadowed by a mask or barrier formed by his upbringing and culture. What occurs if the soul in its small beginnings is forced to take on a secret life? He harbors his secrets in fear and guilt, confessing them to no one until in time the voice of his father chastising him becomes his own. A small war is waged in his mind (Griffin 352). Griffin is saying that Himmler has these hidden secrets that are suppressed and it’s creating a conflict within. These are the barriers to Himmler’s emotions created by his upbringing and ideas. Griffin is stating in this quote that having to keep a secret creates emotional instability, which affects the well being of the individual. The barrier of the secret creates a barrier to true emotions. When someone has a secret their true emotions are hidden within and it is unknown. Griffin relates with this conflict that Himmler has. This is shown throughout her essay. “But at this moment in his life Heinrich is facing a void. I remember a similar void, when a long and intimate relationship ended. What I felt then was fear. And at times panic” (Griffin 358). The void that Griffin is talking about is the same void Himmler had and that is feelings ... ... middle of paper ... ...ain of a child’s body. Curled and small, Innocent. The skin soft like velvet to the touch. Eyes open and staring without reserve or calculation, quite simply, into the eyes of whoever appears in this field of vision. Without secrets. Arms open, ready to receive or give, just in the transpiration of flesh, sharing the sound of the heartbeat, the breath, the warmth of body on body (Griffin 391). In this quote Griffin is saying that a baby is born with no secrets, innocent with arms wide open and then she is implying that at that point in a persons life is the only point where there are no secrets. She is saying that it is impossible for someone to not have secrets. It is just human nature like the innocence of a newborn baby. The point Griffin is getting at is that secrets/barriers lead to misconceptions about others and it affects the feelings of human beings. Once these secrets can be revealed and feelings can be exposed then it will help people understand themselves and better understand others. Works Cited Griffin, Susan. “Our Secret”. Ways of Reading Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Sixth edition. Boston. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.
Werner’s story begins in an orphanage where he is fated to work in the coal mines, a place where his father dies. Werner is adamant in liberating himself from this fate, and wants to pursue a career in science, which is shown in his skill for using and repairing radios. This draws the interest of the Hitler Youth in Werner, who agrees to join solely to free himself of the mines. This is against Jutta’s wishes, who tries to convince Werner there are destructive changes happening in Germany. Here, Werner’s motivations of self-preservation cloud his ethical judgement, and so he begins his journey along injustice.
Wideman, John Edgar. “Our Time.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 657-694. Print.
Griffin spends a good portion of “Our Secret” writing about Himmler’s childhood. It is through his family’s history and child-rearing practices that she hopes to find answers. When Himmler is just ten years old he is told by his father that “his childhood is over now” (236). Himmler has to take himself seriously now and obey his father’s watchful eye. Everything Heinrich does from that point on is directly meant to influence his future and who he will become. This is a choice the society he is born into makes for him, he has no choice. Gebhard, Himmler’s father, is extremely overbearing and controlling of Himmler. Like many Germans of the time, he follows the advice of German child-rearing experts: “Crush the will. . .Establish dominance. Permit no disobedience. Suppress everything in the child” (237). German parents are taught that children “should be permeated by the impossibility from lock...
He demonstrated how life was for African Americans in the southern states like South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia. He achieved his goal by dying his skin to become black man, spending several months in 1959 living as an African American as they were living at that time . For example, one of the greatest discrimination the Griffin lived was the deprivation of public services such as the use of a toilet, restaurant, library, education. He said " … this year of freedom any man could deprive another of anything so basic as the need to quench thirst or use the restroom” (61). In my opinion, this is a true example of how Negroes were deprived of physical needs and excessive abuse of whites. Although the president Lincoln had proclaimed the freedom for the Negroes hundred years ago; however, in 1950’s they still have not enjoyed it. Personally, the climax of the book is when the author start to feel the discrimination from white people to him as an African American. He said that when he was in the restroom was the only place that he felt safe, isolated and owns the space around him (132). At this point, I imagine that he was desperate, angry, and disappointed. I guess most of the black people could feel in the same way. Also he said, “… nothing but the color of skin. My experience proved that. They judged me by no other quality. My skin dark. That was sufficient reason for [white people] to deny me those rights and freedoms without which life loses its significance and becomes a matter of little more than animal survival” (115). This is the clearest way that he can prove that because of his pigmentation, he was being discriminated, he was living with a fear of people with the different skin color of him. Therefore, I believe that Griffin
In “Our Secret” Heinrich Himmler is named after a prince, whom his father believes he can be like one day, as long as he makes the right decisions. Heinrich’s father controls what he writes in his journal, making Heinrich leave out emotions. Gebhard’s intimidating demeanor is exposed through the line, “He has the face of one who looks for mistakes. He is vigilant” (242). Growing up in a household where the only thing Heinrich’s father did was search for his mistakes must have been unsettling and stres...
Griffin feels it is necessary to understand the hardship of blacks in the United States of America. Through medications, bleaching and ultraviolet light, Griffin is able to temporarily change his skin color so that he can walk through the streets and understand the injustices faced by African Americans. Later on, the author moves farther south where he is faced with even more racism and begins to switch between white and black skin, understanding the different expressions given by society of both races. While white, Griffin finds that white people treat him with respect and black people fear him. But while black, Griffin is despised and neglected by whites and is welcomed warmly by blacks (Griffin, 1962).
In the beginning of the novel, Griffin only thinks for himself.When he accidentally kidnaps her, he imagines that “If he stopped to let her out, the way she kept demanding, this girl would run screaming to the first person she saw. In ten minutes or less, he would be arrested.” (pg.4)The change we see in his character is drastic.An example of this change is when Cheyenne is trying to escape and Griffin is helping her, Griffin injures himself. He won’t allow Cheyenne to stay or help him. At this moment, Cheyenne realizes that ”if they find you, they might kill you for helping me.”(pg.178) Despite the fact that he may be abused more than his father already had, he still chose to put Cheyenne over himself and make sure she was saved first. Just as Griffin had Cheyenne, the characters CeeCee had grown to love in her novel allowed her to find who she was. At the beginning of her novel, she was given the job of caring for her mentally ill mother who made her feel outcast and alone.She never thought much of herself and always put her mother before herself.As she meets Talullah and Oletta,and learns that they actually care for her, she begins to open up and began to “[feel] proud of who [she] was, and, well-maybe even a little bit pretty."(pg.303)With the positive influence the characters bestowed upon them, their personalities are more
Moreover, After his skin color changed, the reaction of Mr.Griffin when he saw himself does not know himself and he be afraid. However, after that, he decided
At the time of the book's writing in 1959, race relations in America were particularly strained and Griffin aimed to explain the difficulties that black people faced in certain areas. Under the care of a doctor, Griffin
The most difficult experience that Griffin must have faced as a black man would have to be the fact that he was a white American posing as a black American at a time when prejudice and racist discrimination against African Americans were prevalent. Through his book, he shares how he expected to experience oppression, difficulties, and prejudice (racism) but he was surprised to find the real gravity and extent of the problem. He was called insulting words like “nigger” and the hate stare. He also discovered how it seemed unattainable to find any job due to the integration of racial prejudice in the Southern states. In relation, what probably angered and depressed Griffin the most would have to be his discovery of the extent of racism. It appeared that white Southern men deeply believe blacks were incapable of being morally refined, loyal, or decent and polite. For an actual white American, Griffin was clearly appalled to find the degree to which prejudice was imprinted in the Southern culture. On the other hand, Griffin experienced the courtesy of African Americans as they saw him as one of them. Soon, he understood the predicaments and depressive state of African Americans and how white Americans misunderstood people of
Although many come to the conclusion that it is an essay about life and humanity, not everyone understands her motives for splitting it up the way she does, and why doing so adds so much to her theme. By scattering the separate pieces of each thread the way she does, she is not only mimicking human diversity and human “fragmentation” (my way of saying the division of people into categories), but she is also connecting ideas to a common theme, much like the way we are all connected to humanity. Her writing is not clear and connected perfectly because neither is humanity. Life and they ways we are all interconnected is scattered - a crazy huge puzzle we are still all trying to piece together each day. While we are all so different and segregated, where are still united by a common theme of humanity, and so is Griffin’s
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; Or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction is About You." Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction. Ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. 1-37.
The character of Himmler reflects how masks are developed at an early age, and how individuals start to hide behind them frequently in order to gain acceptance from others. However, by pretending to be something that a person is not, that individual starts to become frustrated about his identity, and codependence may be developed. In “Our Secret,” Himmler is given a journal during his childhood to start developing his writing skills, and because he is told by his father that he needs to start to maturate. According to Griffin, “Heinrich …. does not write of his feelings …. Or dreams,” and that “[the] entries … [are] like the words of a schoolboy commanded to write what the teacher requires of him” (Griffin 315). In this statement Griffin emphasizes that when a person writes in a journal feelings can be perceived through the writing, but in Himmler’s case, he was taught by his father to regulate his emotions by constraining the display of such. Additionally, by limiting Himmler’s expressions to what was considered appropriate, he started to develop codependence on his father while he was struggling inside. Therefore, the only way that Himmler found a solution to his struggles was by portraying the image of the child his father wanted him to be, while inside he was feeling insecure and frustrated. Griffin also gives the idea that individuals hide behind masks to find acceptance, and to look ordinary because appearing otherwise would be improper. This is addressed when Griffin states, “ordinary … a kind of m...
The bearer of a secret faces many obstacles to feeling inner peace. When someone is holding in a secret they are also holding back from peace, keeping things bottled up inside usually makes people unhappy. It can be mentally exhausting having to repetitively think of this thing thats haunting your mind. There is proof of this in both my readings and my research but the example used is from the play A Doll’s House. When Nora -The main character and wife of torvald- and Krogstad -Torvald’s employee- are talking about her secret, he’s telling her that she must not think of leaving the children or harming herself. When she asks how he could possibly know what she has been feeling, he explains that...