When being asked to paint a picture of the universe from darkest black to gray, one might think that this would be an easy task. After all, when discussing the events that these authors have endured, it is difficult calling anything gray. Pitch black seems to fit all of the readings equally. Reading the gruesome stories of physical and mental abuse, it is difficult to hear that a human being not only went through what these four did go through, but that a human being could really do this to another person.
If I had to sit and decide in which order to place these writers, the criteria I would use would be how they looked at the spirit of man. Eli Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeucz Borowski, and Charlotte Delbo: what these four writers have in common is that they all experienced the lowest that life possibly could have offered them. They were all beaten, tortured, and had to live everyday with the realization that that day could be their last on earth. The way that Borowski has titled his chapter, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman” made me suspicious right away. Living in that environment can turn a normal person into a monster.
“Listen, Henri, are we good people?”
“That’s stupid. Why do you ask?”
“You see, my friend, you see, I don’t know why, but I am furious, simply furious with these people – furious because I must be here because of them. I feel no pity. I am not sorry they’re going to the gas chamber. Damn them all! I could throw myself at them, beat them with my fists. It must be pathological, I just can’t understand… (Borowski 350)”
The Essay on Ben Johnson Death Reader Borowski
The short story, "This Way To The Gas, Ladies And Gentlemen" by Tadeusz Borowski and the poem "On My First Son" by Ben Johnson, both deal with death. They are very different types of death and are told in different ways but through some similar approaches, a similar feeling is portrayed to the reader of each. One of the first similarities of the two is that they are both told in the first person ...
This quote shows how humanity is killed when put into these horrific situations that Borowski has written about. Of course all of these people are in a situation that truly is unimaginable, but the lack of humanity is most prevalent here.
One passage in which Borowski comes to the realization of what is going on really hit me as being extremely important. “…The scenes become confused in my mind – I am not sure if all of this is actually happening, or if I am dreaming. There is a humming inside my head; I feel that I must vomit (Borowski 350).” Unfortunately, he is not dreaming. This really did happen and in placing the four writers, I would have to say that Tadeusz Borowski is the darkest black.
When I first began to read “Survival In Auschwitz,” by Primo Levi, I didn’t think it was half as bad at “Night” by Elie Wiesel. The first hundred-or-so pages was basically a how-to-survive manual for the concentration camps. Don’t leave your stuff hanging around for anyone to steal, know when to go to the bathroom at night, and other insignificant things that could be serious if they weren’t followed. But in the second half of the book, you saw instances of how Levi really saw the camp to be. “Our wisdom lay in ‘not trying to understand’, not imagining the future, not tormenting ourselves as to how and when it would all be over; not asking others or ourselves any questions (Levi 116).” This was the first of two quotes that really led me to believe how Levi perceived these people and the way in which they lived. Thinking of the future (or attempting to) only made the situation worse for one reason: they didn’t know if there would be a future.
The way that Levi looked at the spirit of man really hit me with him saying this:
“As for us, we were too destroyed to be really afraid. The few who could still judge and feel rightly, drew new strength and hope from the bombardments; those whom hunger had not yet reduced to a definitive inertia often profited from the moments of general panic to undertake doubly rash expeditions (since, besides the risk of the raid, theft carried out in conditions of emergency was punished by hanging) to the factory kitchens or the stores. But the greater number bore the new danger and the new discomforts with unchanged indifference: it was not a conscious resignation, but the opaque torpor of beasts broken by blows, whom the blows no longer hurt (Levi 118).”
The Essay on Elie Chlomo Camp Father
In 1944, in the village of Sighet, Romania, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel spends much time and emotion on the Talmud and on Jewish mysticism. His instructor, Moshe the Beadle, returns from a near-death experience and warns that Nazi aggressors will soon threaten the serenity of their lives. However, even when anti-Semitic measures force the Sighet Jews into supervised ghettos, Elie's family remains ...
I believe that Levi is showing that he had ceased to see the reason to live. To him, he really was no longer living because he was one of the victims. He had an inside view and he describes being too broken down to care about life itself. For these reasons, I place “Survival In Auschwitz” as the second darkest shade of black.
Elie Wiesel told a descriptive story of the process leading up to the concentration camp and of the camps themselves. Throughout the book, Wiesel has a good look on human nature within himself. Never did he look to harm any of those in the camps with him, but more so because he always kept that close bond with his father. He truly believed that they needed each other to survive, which may have been the case for Wiesel. He was a young teenager who clung to his father and who demanded that his father cling to him. The part of the book that really changed me was on the last page. “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread (Wiesel 109).” Wiesel had gone through so much in first losing his mother and sister. Then after so long and with so little time left in the camp, the loss of his father. I hesitate to call his father his best friend, but he was his only friend. The one person who he had really talked to in his entire time in the concentration camps dies, and all Wiesel can think about is bread.
He was a victim of being young, but Wiesel saw things that he couldn’t believe. At one point, on a long march to a certain camp, a “friend” of Wiesel purposely loses his own father in the march just because he wanted to rid himself of this burden. His father! A burden? He felt that his best chance of survival was to cut off all ties with the one person still alive that loves you the most. This incident changed Wiesel’s view of humanity because he couldn’t understand what kind of person would do something of that magnitude. For these reasons, I see “Night” as being the second most gray.
The Essay on Each Persons Writing Expresses Hisher Personality It Is The
Each persons writing expresses his/her personality. It is the primary basis upon which others judge our work, what we know and what we are willing to say on a certain issue. It illustrates our thinking to other people. The good thing about writing is that it is portable to any place and one can pass on his/her ideas through time and distances. Writing can help keeping track of earlier ideas and ...
Not to take anything away from the severity of the writings and experiences of Charlotte Delbo, but her passage, “Voices,” was the least harsh in the view of human nature. Maybe it was because I found her writings the most difficult to get into because they were broken down into seven shorter passages. The one that does stick in my mind was the poem written by the girl about her mother. In this poem, the girl always wanted to talk about the experiences of the concentration camps while her mother had the opposite reaction. She never wanted to mention them ever again. “Now that you are back/I’ll close the shutters./They must be very rusty (Delbo 85)” This quote is there to say that even though many terrible things happened to them, she will close the door on it and leave it up to her mother to come to her.
Delbo’s writings didn’t hit me as hard as the other three did. Of course it was an awful experience, just as bad as the others of course. But the way she talks about everything, overall it does hit me that she sees the spirit of man to be deteriorating as much as the other three writers. One observation that I make is that Charlotte Delbo is the only woman of the four. Maybe this is to mean that woman didn’t have a view on life that was as deteriorated as the men. Either way, it is difficult to say that one person’s writings are more or less gray. I think they are all as black as they come.
