Identity And Family In The Devil's Arithmetic Poem

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Six million Jews died in the holocaust. In The Devil’s Arithmetic, Hannah is tired of holiday gatherings. She is tired of always hearing about the past. But this year Passover seder will be different. Hannah will be mysteriously transported into the past. Jane Yolen used the motifs of Identity and Family to show the theme It’s important to know about the past. Like many Jews during the Holocaust, Hannah was robbed of her identity. Hannah starts to notices that when the women get their hair cut off, they are hard to tell apart. The lack of individuality was something the Nazi’s wanted to help dehumanize the Jewish population. The narrator states “But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with

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