Kaddish For An Unborn Child Analysis

Society’s unjust and cruel treatments acts a form of control, also known as oppression. Broken Glass by Arthur miller and Kaddish for an Unborn Child by Imre Kertez express the effects of the Holocaust’s oppression in the form of anti-Semitism on their characters. Imre Kertez delves into the traumatized aftermath of surviving a concentration camp, while Arthur Miller focuses on the influences the Holocaust can have thousands of miles away in North America. Sylvia in Broken Glass becomes paralysed after seeing the tragedies in the papers, contributing more problems to her marriage, which overall tests her character. Comparatively, Kertez's narrator explains why he refuses to have children in a world that could produce the horrors of the Holocaust,

whereupon his continuous writing serves as a manner of contending with the catastrophe of Auschwitz. Tragedy provokes fear of oppression which develops into an isolation that can only be escaped through finding a purpose.
A tragedy has extensive ramifications including fear, which can easily consume one, preventing progress in moving on. The narrator’s catastrophic experience of the Holocaust in Kaddish for a Child Unborn reduced his view of Judaism as merely an external characteristic. He believed Judaism was not the outcome of one’s beliefs, yet it was an appeal to be persecuted: “The body of the Jew, however, is always marked, stigmatized as Other by what Wittgenstein would term ‘seeing as’—that is, by a form of looking that quickly shuns the individual for a preconceived abstraction.” (Adler). Therefore, he was adamant in his refusal to bear a child that would inevitability experience anti-Semitism. This fear of the future possessing the same cruelty as his past permitted his lifelong terror:
…my subsequent camp life (because I continued to live like this, as a free camp inmate in the camp, for quite a while) bestowed on my free camp life such a singular flavour and piquancy, the unforgettably sweet and tentative experience of life regained: that I was living and yet living as if the Germans might return at any moment, and therefore not fully living at all. (Kertez 54)
The narrator confesses to living out of fear, which in itself places him back in a camp full of distress for the possibility of history repeating that would ultimately befall upon the future generation. The narrator’s life of fear is barely a life at all simply because “The Narrator does not want to exist. He writes to escape living.” (Ultman). Through constantly revisiting the past by dwelling in its ramifications, one is easily consumed by the tragedy that will forever possess their freedom, condemning them to a “half-life” of isolated fear as exemplified by the narrator.
Similarly, Phillip’s fear of anti-Semitics constantly pushed him to do everything in his power to avoid being tyrannized. Although Phillip did not consume himself in writing, he too concealed himself from the world. “It was Sylvia who forces Phillip to examine his once perfectly buttoned-up life,” ensuing a revelation of the absurdity one’s life is when engulfed in the anguish of an uncontrollable circumstance (Canby). Essentially, when Phillip understood the irrelevance of being different with living life free of anxiety, he accepted his fate in being unique: “They’re Chinese! —and here I spend a lifetime looking in the mirror at my face! —Why we’re different I will never understand but to live so afraid, I don’t want that anymore. I tell you if I live I have to try to change.” (Miller 2.5). Unlike the narrator, Phillip was able to recognize his terror of being persecuted for his existence was out of his control, liberating him from the “half-life” of his previous self and the narrator. Fear emitted from a tragic life of subjugation cannot be escaped through permitting it to consume one in a solitary life, but only in accepting the tragedy and living in spite of it. When one sanctions a calamity to take control in the form of terror, their life becomes isolated through the consistent influence its fear boasts upon them.
Developing into a state of isolation may temporarily prevent the infliction of cruelty, however it will not solve the ordeal of oppression.

Through this seclusion of the outside world, one is forced to dwell strictly upon themselves—their past memories of suffering and pain will continuously repeat, forcing one to relive their own tragic history. The narrator is a prime example of encompassing oneself with the grievances of the past: “During those years I also became aware of the nature of my work, which in essence is nothing other than to dig, dig further and to the end, the grave that others started to dig for me in the clouds, the winds, the nothingness.” (Kertez 117). After constantly encountering anti-Semitic oppression, the narrator persistently wrote his thoughts of these persecutions. This further deepened his anguish as it arose the pain of the past, bringing him ever bleakly closer to his demise. The original quote elucidates this concept of the past harming one to the point where death is the only escape: “...more darkly now stroke your strings, then as smoke you will rise into air / then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined.” (Wilkinson). The narrator failed to cope with the horrific memories the Holocaust delivered through his attempt in writing, which ultimately forced him to oppress himself. In other words, fearing the oppression of others cannot be escaped through dwelling in an isolated recount of its ramifications. Isolation will not cure the anguish of a catastrophe because it is a prison set for oneself by the horrors of their

memories.
This effect of isolation is not limited to the outlook of the mind. Sylvia’s paralysis was a reaction to the tragedies in Germany, mirroring the confinement of her marriage. Sylvia’s husband forced her to not be employed out of fear of her receiving racism, developing into a correlation between him and the oppressors in Germany: “Then just as I’m escaping around a corner a man catches me and pushes me down…He gets on top of me, and begins kissing me…And then he starts to cut off my breasts…I think it’s Phillip…he was almost like one of the others.” (Miller 1.2). Sylvia’s nightmare revealed her association with the Jewish victims in Europe, hence her paralysis to mirror their isolated ends as way of expressing her fear: “Sylvia is blessed—or cursed—with an intuitive, near mystical yet totally ‘real’ sympathetic bond that links her to the victims of suffering.” (Adler). Sylvia’s connection to the Jews in Europe provoked her to react out of fear through her physical imprisonment of isolation, ensuing further problems within her marriage rather than present a means of deliverance from her oppressors. Self-imprisonment is the result of the horrors one has experienced, petrifying them to hide from the world and dwell in the terror, rather than challenge life and find a meaning. Isolation, both physical and mental, will only instigate a cycle of imprisonment leaving no means of escape other than an external motivation.
Having a purpose in life provides a goal that can liberate one from oppression. When one’s energy and ambitions are directed outwards on an external concern, they can easily avoid the repressing cycle of dwelling on their traumas. Sylvia’s incentive to help her people drove her to breaking out of her metaphorical isolation of paralysis: “This is an emergency! What if they kill those children! Where is Roosevelt! Where is England! Somebody should do something before they murder us all! Sylvia takes a step off the edge of the bed...” (Miller 2.2). Sylvia literally broke out of paralysis when she found the ultimate purpose of the survival of her race to “stand up” for, freeing her from her helpless state. Conversely, the narrator could only contemplate his existence based on his past, without any motivation to change: “…you’re non-existence viewed as the necessary and radical liquidation of my own existence.” (Kertez 67). Unlike Sylvia, the narrator diminished his life through his incapability of conceiving an escape of his self-imprisonment. He dictated that his refusal to have child translated into the refusal to have a purpose, therefore he dissolved himself into his pain caused by his world of anti-Semitism. The purpose of fighting for something, such as survival, is an escape from solitarily contemplating life as only the outcome of a horrific incident. Through this, the fears of the past will cease to haunt one into a bleak, futile existence.
The fear of being oppressed, as past tragedies have exemplified, will continue to consume one into a state of self-imprisonment unless a purpose is found. Fear of history repeating occasioned the narrator to live a life of contemplating his traumas unlike Phillip, whose revelation of accepting and being indifferent to his societal disparities, enabled his liberation of his self-imprisonment caused by oppression. The mental imprisonment of the narrator and the physical paralysis of Sylvia prohibited them from living life by supplying a means of avoiding oppression through abiding in the developments of their devastations. The narrator’s failure to find a meaning, especially in a child, left him unmotivated to escape his isolation. In contrast, Sylvia’s fortitude in helping the Jewish victims in Germany escape tyranny empowered her to escape her self-imprisonment of paralysis. It is through this understanding of these characters that one may gain hope in escaping the repercussions of oppression.