The context of the work is set between 1939 and 1944, in Danzig (Germany). But the narrator, Pilenz, tells the story about Mahlke and their adolescence, some years later, when he is already an adult. Pilenz's aim of writing this story is making a kind of catharsis in order to remove a feeling of guilt. This feeling of guilt is mainly due to the fact that, his high school fellow, Mahlke, died drowned into the sea at the end of the Second World War.
Along the novel the symbolic figures of the cat and the mouse, are named constantly. The cat mainly represents the persecutor, the repressor, while the mouse represents the victim. The cat in the novel represents, for instance, the Nazis and the mouse the occupied and humiliated Poland. Pilenz and Mahlke also represent both animals: Pilenz the cat as direct or indirectly contributes to Mahlke's destruction, and the mouse that burden in his conscience plus the love and hate relationship that he feels towards Mahlke creates in him such a dependence on the latter, that turns him into the mouse. Mahlke is the mouse -an animal which is also represented by Mahlke's apple of his throat- because he is the eternal humiliated even though he keeps all the time trying to be accepted by the Nazi society, making all kind of feats to pay people's attention. Mahlke is also a cat because of the feelings of dependence and of inferiority that he awakes in Pilenz.
`The reader is not expected to share Pilenz admiration for Mahlke', due to the way Pilenz tells Mahlke's story. One may have a feeling that, when reading Pilenz's words, Mahlke's attitude is sometimes irritable, egocentric, and so on, despite often Pilenz want to deny those feelings which we perceive that he shows. Pilenz says at the beginn...
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...ot go straights to look for him to giving it to him, he let him go, and after a while, when starts to says shout: `can opener, can opener', when maybe Mahlke has already died. After that, Pilenz spend a lot of time looking for Mahlke in circus and when there was a meeting of veterans with the iron cross. Why Pilenz looked for Mahlke, why Pilenz did not give him the can opener?
Ambiguity is all throughout the novel Pilenz's lapsus, repetitions (about Mahlke's house or about how the cat achieved Mahlke's throat) and confusions makes the reader distrusts Pilenz's certainty of his story, Pilenz intention of writing it. Why Pilenz writes this story? Was it really as self therapy to forget his feeling of guilt? Was it to victimize, to apologize himself? Did he deliberately show Mahlke as someone awful in order to justify that he treated him as inferior, as a mouse?
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
In 1944, the Jews of Hungary were relatively unaffected by the catastrophe that was destroying the Jewish communities of Europe in spite of the infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935-designed to dehumanize German Jews and subject them to violence and prejudice. The Holocaust itself did not reach Hungary until 1944. In Wiesel's native Sighet, the disaster was even worse: of the 15,000 Jews in prewar Sighet, only about fifty families survived the Holocaust. In May of 1944, when Wiesel was fifteen, his family and many inhabitants of the Sighet shtetl were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The largest and deadliest of the camps, Auschwitz was the site of more than 1,300,000 Jewish deaths. Wiesel's father, mother, and little sister all died in the Holocaust. Wiesel himself survived and immigrated to France. His story is a horror story that comes to life when students in high school read this novel. Even though many students have not witnessed or participated in such horror, they relate to the character because Wiesel is their age. They cannot believe someone went through the nightmare he did at their age.
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.
The mood of Night is harder to interpret. Many different responses have occurred in readers after their perusal of this novel. Those that doubt the stories of the holocaust’s reality see Night as lies and propaganda designed to further the myth of the holocaust. Yet, for those people believing in the reality, the feelings proffered by the book are quite different. Many feel outrage at the extent of human maliciousness towards other humans. Others experience pity for the loss of family, friends, and self that is felt by the holocaust victims. Some encounter disgust as the realization occurs that if any one opportunity had been utilized the horror could of been avoided. Those missed moments such as fleeing when first warned by Moshe the Beadle, or unblocking the window when the Hungarian officer had come to warn them, would have saved lives and pain.
...rest of Anton’s family and why the assault ever happened, “although there are no ashes in sight.” (Mulisch 84).
Ishmael tells the narrator about Walter Sokolow’s obsession with Hitler and how Hitler held every German’s attention by telling them a story about Aryan power. Ishmael feels...
The Maus series of books tell a very powerful story about one man’s experience in the Holocaust. They do not tell the story in the conventional novel fashion. Instead, the books take on an approach that uses comic windows as a method of conveying the story. One of the most controversial aspects of this method was the use of animals to portray different races of people. The use of animals as human races shows the reader the ideas of the Holocaust a lot more forcefully than simply using humans as the characters.
The major themes of Franz story were inspired by the cultural and historical events in Prague, which is the author’s town. The town was full of hostility which was caused by economic status and differences in people’s cultural backgrounds. The story is told using the interior monologue styles. It focuses on the thoughts and feelings of the main character which support the themes of abandonment and troubled relationship.
The Silber Medal winning biography, “Surviving Hitler," written by Andrea Warren paints picture of life for teenagers during the Holocaust, mainly by telling the story of Jack Mandelbaum. Avoiding the use of historical analysis, Warren, along with Mandelbaum’s experiences, explains how Jack, along with a few other Jewish and non-Jewish people survived.
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.
By means of comic illustration and parody, Art Spiegelman wrote a graphic novel about the lives of his parents, Vladek and Anja, before and during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II delves into the emotional struggle he faced as a result of his father’s failure to recover from the trauma he suffered during the Holocaust. In the novel, Vladek’s inability to cope with the horrors he faced while imprisoned, along with his wife’s tragic death, causes him to become emotionally detached from his son, Art. Consequently, Vladek hinders Art’s emotional growth. However, Art overcomes the emotional trauma his father instilled in him through his writing.
“What do you expect? That’s war…” Elie Wiesel, young teenage boy sent to work in a concentration camp with his family near the end of WW2. Author of his own autobiography, Night recounting his struggles during that time. This book is about a boy named Elie Wiesel who was captured by the Nazi’s and was put into a concentration camp, and got disconnected from God, and was very close to his mom, dad, and family. Throughout Night Elie Wiesel addresses the topic of genocide through the use of imagery, simile, and personification.
Montag's identity crisis of being a fireman makes him question who he is. Montag notices that the firemen have the same appearance as himself which has him think about Clarisse's question . "He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McCellen saying, 'Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than stroke them up and get them going' (34)?" This isn't his thoughts, instead they are Clarisse's thoughts since she asked it first. This shows an internal conflict because Motang is questioning his identity as a fireman which makes him want to choose a side. He is siding on Clarisse's side thinking she might be right, since he ask the same question as her. He is curious to know even though he is already familiar with the fireman history but thinks he will get a different response. Perhaps Montag is thinking tha...
In the novella Of Mice and Men, there are symbolism used through animals to represent what happens to Lennie and what kind of sides he has. Candy’s dog displays the image of Lennie’s death because they both get shot in the head and have problems to the extent of having other characters trying to kill them. Throughout the novella, there are rabbits that keep showing up around Lennie. Lennie loves rabbits and likes to touch their fur. He will do anything to protect them because he sees the part of pureness he has in him through the rabbit. He will make sure no harm comes to them because he wants to keep that part of pure innocence that he has in him. When Lennie and George are talking about their dream, Lennie declares if cats come to bother
All of the characters in Animal farm have counterparts in real life. This book was based on the Russian Revolution, and all the important populace of the revolution are symbolized. Some of the animals represent individuals in the Russian Revolution, and some types of animals represent different types of Russian citizens. The book carries out much like the actual revolution. It starts out with hopes of an empire where all are equal and the unfair unjust leader is thrown out. Then it moves on to where some individuals begin to take more power than is rightfully theirs. At the end the rulers have completely taken over and the kingdom is as it was under the original rulers. I will compare the animals from top of the social class to the bottom. At the top were the pigs. Each pig represented someone different in the revolution. Old Major is compared to Lenin. He was an ideologist who dreamed up a wonderful government where all the animals were equal and the humans, or the czars, were pushed out. Unfortunately his dream would never materialize. Then we are left with his predecessors. The first is Snowball. Snowball believed one hundred percent in Old Majors ideals. He wanted all the things Old Major wanted, such as the welfare of the animals. In the Russian Revolution his counterpart would be Trotsky. Trotsky believed and wanted the same things as Lenin, and wanted to continue what Lenin had started. Then comes Napoleon. Napoleon was selfish and greedy. He did not want to share the power or the decision making with any other individual. This was the same for Stalin. At first Napoleon and Snowball shared the decision making and had debates about what course of action they would take. This worked for awhile. Then Napoleon grew weary of long debates, and he thought he could make the decision by himself. He then forced Snowball out of the farm and started to spread lies about Snowball to get the entire farm against him. Stalin did the same thing against Trotsky and forced Trotsky into hiding into Mexico, where he was eventually assassinated. Both Stalin and Napoleon ruined any hopes of equal and fare government and instead set up dictatorships. Then comes the final important pig, Squealer. Squealer did not make the decisions in the government but acted more like the controlled media as in the Russian government.