Rose Blanche By Robert Innocenti

Rose, innocent waves goodbye to the Nazi soldiers. This shows the theme of viewing war through a child’s eyes. World War 2 was a serious time, where countless died. It was a war. A war that had many different sides. A certain event that 7happened within it was the Holocaust. The historical fiction piece “Rose Blanche” by Robert Innocenti is the story of a young German girl, by the fitting name of Rose Blanche during the Holocaust. She was oblivious during the entire situation. The theme of viewing was through a child’s eye is very prominent throughout the story. First of all, Roses uses phrases that only a child would use. In the text, it states “Broken toys. I like the color of the river. It looks like the sky.” (5) This statement tells that Rose is not looking at the big picture, all she can think about is how the color of the sky and river match, when in actuality there is a war going on and those broken toys might be some of the only things that the Jewish kids had left or owned, and now it is gone. This shows that she is not looking at the overall idea of the situation. Furthermore,

According to the text, it reads “Rose Blanche hid her food in her school bag and sneaked out of school early.” (17) This quote explains how Rose was getting the food to the children. The thing is, Rose is skipping school just for the Jewish children’s well-being. This is something only a generous child would do. Another piece of evidence is “One morning all the people of the town fled… Rose Blanche disappeared that day.” (20/21) This explains the great lengths that Rose would do for the Jewish children. While Rose’s town people were fleeing, she was thinking about others not herself. She made sure that the Jewish children were taken care of first. The evidence above shows that Rose helping the Jewish children has relativity to the theme of viewing war through a child’s