Comparing The Literary Works Of Shimmy Gezer And Professor Tendler

Torture, starvation, physical and mental abuse, being subjected to various scientific experiments, and even witnessing the deaths of thousands, including family, are but a few of the traumatizing and horrific things that the victims of the Holocaust suffered through. Nathan Englander, who grew up as a part of the Orthodox Jewish community in West Hempstead, New York, incorporates the horrific scenes of the Holocaust in many of his literary works. In one of his more popular works, Free Fruit for Young Widows, Englander presents the lives of two different men, Shimmy Gezer and Professor Tendler, after they both survived the Holocaust as children. Throughout this literary work, Englander tells of the lives of Shimmy and Tendler, and paints a vivid

picture of how the Holocaust has made them the person they grow up to be. When analyzing Nathan Englander’s short story, Free Fruit for Young Widows, through a psychological lens, the lives of the characters Shimmy and Tendler clearly indicate that the Holocaust’s psychological effects on the many victims involved changed how they evolved back into society, built social relationships, and survived physically but not emotionally. Each man was changed in different ways by the traumatizing effects of the Holocaust which can be seen by the way they react to various situations within the short story. Being exposed to the traumatizing events of the Holocaust was one of the main reason that the lives of these two characters each turned out to be so different, but the real mystery is how two people can experience the same trauma and turn out to lead two totally different lives.