The book the Sunflower is about Simon Wiesenthal that is forced to a concentration camp because he was Jewish. As all the other prisoners he was living his hard life normally till one day he and groups of other Jews were taken to a hospital to clean up. While walking to the hospital he looks away from the people passing by on the street on the street in, in fear he will see someone he’s known. Soon after he comes across a cemetery for Nazi soldiers, on each grave he sees a sunflower. Simon soon grows jealous for he knows when he dies there will be no sunflower connecting him to the world of the living. He thinks that the sunflower carries symbolism to him, for he knows he will be dumped in a mass grave like all the other Jews. Soon after
he goes into the hospital Wiesenthal is led by a nurse to see a patient of the hospital. The patient he is brought to is a bandaged up very injured SS soldier. Wiesenthal is forced to stay and listen to the injured German’s story about the things he’s done to Jews, his mother, and about all the people he has killed for Nazi Germany. He tells the story about burning a building filled with people down, and how he never felt sorry while doing it. Next he asks Simon a very important question of will he forgive him for his acts of cruelty towards the Jewish people. He doesn’t know what to say and promptly leaves to his group before another Nazi finds out. He returns to the hospital on the following day for more trash duty. As of the day before the nurse comes to him, not asking him to go in the room, but giving him the Nazi’s belongings to Simon. He quickly says no to the gesture. That night Kerl dies. Simon later leaves and asks his fellow camp mates in his position what they would have responded to the question, but his peers were no help. After years the camp is set free and Simon continues to live his life normally now. One day, he stumbles across the mother of Karl’s house. He ends up going in and talking to her, thinking that she will help him decide if he did the right thing not accepting Karl’s question to forgive him before he died, but the mother does not help. She still thinks that her boy was good and Simon refuses to tell her all the awful things he did in the war. He finally ends his visit, with the moral question still not being answered. Should he have forgave the Nazi on his death bed?
There are many similarities between the war experiences of Kurt Vonnegut and the character of Billy Pilgrim in his novel Slaughterhouse Five. Several similarities between them are shown in the letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his family dated May 29, 1945 (Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect 11-14).
Chlomo helps Elie develops his mind and teaches him how to stay along with the group and how to survive in the horrific conditions. At end of the novel all the things that Chlomo represents and symbolized remain only in Elie as he dies, "this is the end I'm going to die here".
Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness spoke to me about the question of forgiveness and repentance. Simon Wiesenthal was a Holocaust prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He experienced many brutal and uneasy experiences that no human being should experience in their lifetime and bear to live with it. Death, suffering, and despair were common to Simon Wiesenthal that he questioned his own religious faith because he asks why would his God allow the Holocaust happen to his people to be slaughter and not do anything to save them. During Simon Wiesenthal time as a Jewish Holocaust, Simon was invited to a military hospital where a dying Nazi SS officer wanted to have a conversation. The Nazi SS officer told Simon his story of his life and confesses to Simon of his horrific war crimes. Ultimately, the SS officer wanted forgiveness for what he done to Simon’s Jewish people. Simon Wiesenthal could not respond to his request, because he did not know what to do with a war criminal that participate in mass genocide to Simon’s people. Simon Wiesenthal lives throughout his life on asking the same crucial question, “What would I have done?” (Wiesenthal 98). If the readers would be on the exact situation as Simon was
In Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, he recounts his incidence of meeting a dying Nazi soldier who tells Simon that he was responsible for the death of his family. Upon telling Simon the details, Karl asks for his forgiveness for what he helped accomplish. Simon leaves Karl without giving him an answer. This paper will argue that, even though Karl admits to killing Simon’s family in the house, Simon is morally forbidden to forgive Karl because Karl does not seem to show genuine remorse for his committed crime and it is not up to Simon to be able to forgive Karl for his sins. This stand will be supported by the meaning of forgiveness, evidence from the memoir, quotes from the published responses to Simon’s moral question, and arguments from Thomas Brudholm, Charles Griswold, and Trudy Govier. The possibly raised objection, for this particular modified situation, of forgiveness being necessary to move on from Desmond Tutu will be countered with the logic of needing to eventually find an end somewhere.
After reading your novel, Night, I felt a mix of sadness and anger. The cruelty of the Nazi regime to the innocent Jewish people is a crime that cannot be forgotten because, as you said, it is like a victory for the Nazis when their crimes are erased from human memory. One of the most shocking scenes from the novel occurs near the beginning, where babies are being burned by the truckload. Children too young to resist burned alive because they could not work in the camps. I cannot even imagine how it must have felt to the mothers and fathers of those children to watch that. Another shocking scene was when the train was going to WHEEERE, and the dead were thrown out of the train. After suffering and when faced with harsh conditions, people were
Forgiveness is to stop feeling angry, to stop blaming someone for the way they made a person feel, and stop feeling victims of whatever wickedness was directed towards them. Is forgiveness necessary? Can everyone be forgiven despite the circumstances? If forgiveness depends on the situation, then is it necessary at all? Does forgiveness allow someone to continue their life in peace? Is forgiving someone who causes physical pain to someone, as a pose to forgiving someone who murdered a member of the family the same? If someone can forgive one of these acts so easily can the other be forgiven just as easy? Forgiveness allows for someone to come to terms with what they have experienced. In the case of murder forgiveness is necessary because it allows for someone to be at peace with themselves knowing they no longer have to live with hatred. It also allows someone to begin a new life with new gained experience and different perspectives on life. Forgiveness is necessary from a moral perspective because it allows someone to get rid of hatred and find peace within him or herself to move on with their lives.
The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” was about the drummer at the battle of Shiloh. It was written by Ray Bradbury’s. There are a lot of symbols in this story. They represent a lot of things. Like the blossom tree.
The book Night by Elie Wiesel is an autobiography that describes Elie 's time in the Holocaust. He is a sixteen year old jewish boy in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is a thin scrawny boy, but is very strong. His hair is coal black, but looks bad because it is very short and greasy. His eyes look dark and cold with sadness in them because of the loss he’s experienced in the concentration camp. His hands are torn to pieces because he is a hard worker. He is very dirty due to not being able to shower often. Bruises are found all over him from the beating he often gets if he does not follow protocol in the concentration camp. His feet are cut up and often bleeding because he is on them so much. The bags under his eyes are so distinct because he gets no sleep. His body is broken down and hurt, even after he gets out of the concentration camp his body has still not recovered from the scars.
Eugenia Collier’s “Marigolds” is a memoir of a colored girl living in the Great Depression. The story does not focus on the troubles society presents to the narrator (Elizabeth), but rather is focused on the conflict within her. Collier uses marigolds to show that the changes from childhood to adulthood cause fear in Elizabeth, which is the enemy of compassion and hope.
... is trying to catch Holden in the midst of a “fall.” But Mr. Antolini “fall” describes is very different from the one Holden had imagined. Holden desires an idyllic world of childhood innocence; But Mr. Antolini describes that Holden is giving up or disengaging himself from the real world, or that he would fall in a void that removes life around him. In both these cases, we see that Holden envisions himself as the protector rather than the one to be protected. Holden is the one who really needs to be “caught”. But Mr. Antolini thinks that Holden feels disconnected from his environment, and, his assessment is accurate. Holden wants to attempt to be his own saviour, but Mr. Antolini’s imagines Holden’s falling presents in a more accurate image of what awaits Holden on the other side of the “cliff.” This thus reveals the weaknesses of Holden’s romantic outlook.
Throughout The Catcher in the Rye Holden puts himself in situations that are very stressful. His personality type puts him in these situations. Holden has trouble-making friends because he thinks almost everyone is a phony. The pressure created from not having friends and being able to be comfortable at a school forced him out of an education, “One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all...For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life” (Salinger 13) not only did this force him out of the school but also onto the streets. The song “Under Pressure” by Queen perfectly fits the theme that the pressure Holden created on himself forced him to the edge of sanity. In the song, one of the reoccurring lines is “puts people on the streets” (Queen) referring to pressure. This song perfectly relates to this theme.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is quite a captivating piece of literature. I really thought this book was fantastic, even reading it for a second time. Since this is a play, the majority of the characterization had to be done through dialogue, but the astonishing depth of development that Miller achieved with his characters was astonishing. I truly felt that I intimately knew the characters by the end of the play despite how slim the volume was. Miller's play is an expose of the harsh reality of the American Dream, and while his play's message may not be hopeful, the honesty of his work will resonate with middle-class America even today. Miller's play showed me that not much has changed since post-WWII America. Average people are still struggling to capture the dream that we all feel this land offers us. Happy and Biff are the tragic characters that I hope never to become, but who can blame them for aspiring for something greater? Most disturbing of all, I truly hope that my parents' generation never fall victim to the same destructive hopes that possessed Willy Loman. Perhaps the scariest realization is that any one of us can get caught up in the delusion of what we believe we deserve.
Written by J.D. Salinger in the mid-1900s, The Catcher in the Rye introduced adolescence to the literary world. The novel follows several days in the life of Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old student who has just failed out of his fourth school. Throughout it, we see how Holden, a complicated youth, deals with the transition into adulthood. He sees the adult world as one full of what he terms “phonies.” Thus, he not only wants to refrain from becoming a part of it but he wants to stop others, especially those younger them him, from transitioning into it as well. From this, Holden fantasizes about “catching” kids as they fall into adulthood. This dream of being a “catcher” comes from a misquoted poem, the chorus of which says, “When a body meet a body coming through the rye…” Holden substitutes the word “catch” for “meet” and alters the poem’s meaning (p. 173). Throughout the novel, the idea of the “catcher in the rye” not only divides the world of children from that of adults, it also sets up a paradigm where Holden feels the need to prevent children from transitioning into the latter.
A film bursting with visual and emotional stimuli, the in-depth character transformation of Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List is a beautiful focal point of the film. Riddled with internal conflict and ethical despair, Schindler challenges his Nazi Party laws when he is faced with continuing his ambitious business ideas or throwing it all away for the lives of those he once saw as solely cheap labor. Confronted with leading a double life and hiding his motivations from those allegiant to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Schindler undergoes numerous ethical dilemmas that ultimately shape his identity and challenge his humanity. As a descendent of a Jewish-American, Yiddish speaking World War II soldier who helped liberate concentration camps in Poland, this film allowed for an enhanced personal
In Daisy Miller, Henry James slowly reveals the nature of Daisy"s character through her interactions with other characters, especially Winterbourne, the main character." The author uses third person narration; however, Winterbourne"s thoughts and point of view dominate." Thus, the audience knows no more about Daisy than Winterbourne." This technique helps maintain the ambiguity of Daisy"s character and draws the audience into the story.