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German side of world war 2
German side of world war 2
Mental illness and oppression in literature
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Stones from the River
1. Synopsis of “Stones from the River”
Trudi Montag was growing up during the World Wars in Burgdorf, Germany. She lived with her father, Leo, and helped him run their pay library. When she was young her mother, Gertrude, went insane, and died at the asylum. Trudi could remember how her mother used to run away, and after her father carried her home, he would lock her up in the attic, to try to prevent her from escaping again. She always did escape, and Trudi usually found her outside, hiding under the stairs. Trudi would spend time with her mother in the attic, or under the stairs. In the attic, the two would play with the paper dolls Leo gave his wife, and Gertrude would teach Trudi how to escape from the attic. Under the stairs, Gertrude told Trudi of her affair with her husband’s friend, Emil, and how she fell off his motorcycle one day, and skinned her knee. Her knee healed, but the stones could be felt beneath her skin if she let someone try to feel for them. That very same day Leo got shot in the knee in the First World War, and had to come home, and would forever walk with a limp. Gertrude blamed herself for her husband’s injury, just as Trudi blamed herself for her mother’s death.
Trudi was born a dwarf, a Zwerg, in German. Trudi felt that if she were a normal baby/child, then her mother would have never tried to run away. Trudi thought that it was her fault her mother went insane, and had to go to an asylum, where her mother died. Although Trudi’s father told her it was not her fault her mom died, she blamed herself anyway. Trudi and her dad became close, and would spend their time playing, reading, walking, or working in the library together. At the end of the book, Trudi felt a great lose when her dad died the day after his birthday. Ever since his friend Emil died, and Mrs. Abramowitz was taken away for being a Jew in WW II, Leo grew weak, and seemed to give up his will to live.
Trudi hated the fact that she was a dwarf, and began to hang from doorframes in attempt to stretch her body. She would also tie her mother’s scarves around her head to keep it from growing at night and pray everyday to grow. She asked the town doctor how to make her grow, and even drank some “magic potion” from a man who said it would make her grow. Trudi had no friends in school, and every child made fun o...
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...can prison camps, the
Americans kept their prisoners close to starvation, with only two bowls of soup per
day.” He said, “that the Americans said it was only fair because the Jews got even
less food in the KZs.” In short, American prisoners almost starved because the Jews did, so it was fair. Do you agree with this? Why?
7. Trudi and many others risked their lives hiding Jews in their houses. If you were
confronted with this situation, what would you do?
8. Frau Simon saved a little Jewish girl from being stoned by a group of boys. If you
witnessed the same thing, knowing that protecting Jews was against the law, would you have done the same as Frau Simon? Why?
4. Open ended questions continued
9. What are your feelings toward the Nazis? If you were confronted whether or not to
turn in your family members, as Helmut was, would you? Why?
10. After WW II had ended, many Germans said, “It’s not good to dwell on the things that were terrible.” “Nobody wants to relive those years. We have to go forward.” If
you were told this, would you agree or disagree? Would you want to talk of the War, or never hear of it again? Why?
“The Holocaust: 36 Questions & Answers About the Holocaust.” 36 Questions & Answers About the Holocaust. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2014
...nt, I was put in a time and place where I did not have the ability to think before my actions. This summer in Israel, before going to the Holocaust museum, our authority figures, our counselors, told us to get in a circle. They told us to hit the person next to us harder than the person before hit us. Not knowing why we were doing this, my group starting hitting away, almost breaking each other’s backs because we were hitting so hard. The majority of us hit the people next to us because that is what everyone else was doing. It would have been difficult to stand up for what we believed in. Just like we obeyed our authorities because we feared what they would do to us, Wirz feared General Winder because he was not sure what he was going to do to him.
Even when US troops liberated the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, the stories still never made it to the front page of the paper and people still did not believe in the reliability of the stories (Leff 52). In 1943, a survey w...
Extremely hostile environments forced people to make fast decisions that could have been right or wrong. In some, their conscious came through, but in others their bodies needs were greater than their minds. Everyone is different and everyone deals with devastation in their own way. Although many people made decisions during the Holocaust and in present day that they may regret or be proud of now, they should never have been put through this experience just because of their religion or any other beliefs they may
In the “Yellow-Paper,” the protagonist seeks to relinquish her forms of imprisonment in hopes to escape her mental illness, yet she is still oppressed by those around her and forced to hide her coping mechanism, her journal; from this she is not able to escape her mental illness. The torment caused by the role society consigns for her husband is depicted when he states, “‘What is it little girl’ he said. ‘Don’t go walking about like that - you’ll get cold’” (Gilman 652). Her husband controls her every action and she lacks her needed self expression. She only frees herself after she tears down the wallpaper, freeing the girl inside, which represents her hidden non-expressed self. Similarly, a coinciding of this theme is presented in “The Story of An Hour,” in which Louise Mallard seeks refuge from oppression resulted from a male-dominated society. Mrs. Mallard states, “She said it over and over her breath: ‘free, free, free!’...There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself” (Chopin 2). Ecstatic at the thought of being released from the propriety enforced throughout the nineteenth century, Mallard exclaims that she is able to do the things she is ambitious about. Wanting to live away from the roles of marriage, her short-lived passion is later diminished at the sight
8. The most tragic part of being a German citizen under Nazi rule before World War II was that they had no idea what was going to happen. Nobody could have predicted how those events would have unfolded until they actually occurred. This is the biggest threat to Western democracy and what democratic societies can learn from. The German people saw a failing Weimar Republic and could only think that democracy had failed them, they had nowhere else to turn. It’s important for democratic societies to learn how to act in times of crisis, else they might find themselves experiencing the same fate as Germany. It’s easy for nations that boast freedom and democracy to believe that such a thing couldn’t happen in their country, however, even the most
Through the Holocaust and through the fighting, the hunger and the fear, those persecuted managed to hold on to hope, the one thing no Nazi could break. Though the camps were liberated in 1944-1945, the horrors had already been committed. The death counts of the Nazi prisoners go as high as 13 million, but even with this the Jews still held out hope, still kept fighting, even as they were dragged from their homes into the Death Camps that awaited them, And it is for this reason that none will ever truly forget all the atrocities, horrors and, most importantly, the victims.
Marie had just traveled from her hometown of Ville Rose, where discarding your child made you wicked, to the city of Port-Au-Prince, where children are commonly left on the street. Marie finds a child that she thinks could not be more beautiful, “I thought she was a gift from Heaven when I saw her on the dusty curb, wrapped in a small pink blanket, a few inches away from a sewer as open as a hungry child’s yawn” (79). Marie has suffered many miscarriages, so she takes this child as if it were her own, “I swayed her in my arms like she was and had always been mine” (82). Marie’s hope for a child has paid off, or so it seems. Later, it is revealed that the child is, in fact, dead, and Marie fabricated a story to sanction her hopes and distract her from the harsh reality of her life, “I knew I had to act with her because she was attracting flies and I was keeping her spirit from moving on… She smelled so bad that I couldn’t even bring myself to kiss her without choking on my breath” (85). Her life is thrown back into despair as her cheating husband accuses her of killing children for evil purposes and sends her to
Like in many tragically true stories, it would seem Mrs. Mallard 's freedom came too late. Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour” begins by introducing Mrs. Mallard as a person afflicted with heart trouble. The story builds on this by having Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine and her husband Richard explain the situation in a very sensitive manner. Their efforts would prove to be in vain however as Mrs. Mallard then proceeds to emotionally break down. The news shocks Mrs. Mallard to her very core and has her at odds with how she should feel now that all was said and done. After coming to terms with her situation, fate delivers its final blow in a cruel and deceitful ploy towards Mrs. Mallards. And with that, Mrs. Mallard 's dies. In her hour of change Mrs. Mallard 's was delicate, thoughtful and excitable.
Her theme has often been the dilemmas of the adolescent girl coming to terms with family and a small town. Her more recent work has addressed the problems of middle age, of women alone, and of the elderly. The characteristic of her style is the search for some revelatory gesture by which an event is illuminated and given personal significance. (The Canadian Encyclopedia Plus 1995)
For first eight years of her life, Elaine Risley lived a nomadic lifestyle with her parents. When her father, and entomologist, accepts a job to work as a professor at a university, the family moves to Toronto. Everything is new to Elaine: school, sitting at a desk, straws, and especially real girls. Since her brother does not want to be teased for having a younger sister, Elaine is on her own. At first it is difficult
This is an example of the treatment of Jews at the time. It is very
5.What is Schiller Strasse? where the Jews live with the star of David painted on the door
Chopin describes her as a fragile woman. Because she was “afflicted with a heart trouble,” when she receives notification of her husband’s passing, “great care was taken” to break the news “as gently as possible” (1). Josephine, her sister, and Richards, her husband’s friend, expect her to be devastated over this news, and they fear that the depression could kill her because of her weak heart. Richards was “in the newspaper office when the intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of killed” (1). He therefore is one of the first people to know about his death. Knowing about Mrs. Mallard’s heart, he realizes that they need to take caution in letting Mrs. Mallard know about it. Josephine told her because Richards feared “any less careful, less tender” person relaying the message to Louise Mallard (1). Because of her heart trouble, they think that if the message of her husband’s death is delivered to her the wrong way, her heart would not be able to withstand it. They also think that if someone practices caution in giving her the message, that, ...
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...