What stuck me most about the story of the White Rose, was that even when facing in death they had no regrets and faced their execution head on. Although, Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with Christoph Probst were all sentenced to death and later beheaded, they showed to sign of faulting from their ideology nor remorse for their actions. They never regretted being members of the "White Rose" movement, and belonging to a group of students and others who opposed Hitler's dictatorship and openly protested the regime by distributing anti-Nazi literature on their college campus. Even When Hans was warned the Gastapo were on his track and that he must count on being arrested soon, he never lost sight of his mission. In fact, in the days that followed
Chlomo helps Elie develops his mind and teaches him how to stay along with the group and how to survive in the horrific conditions. At end of the novel all the things that Chlomo represents and symbolized remain only in Elie as he dies, "this is the end I'm going to die here".
Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness spoke to me about the question of forgiveness and repentance. Simon Wiesenthal was a Holocaust prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He experienced many brutal and uneasy experiences that no human being should experience in their lifetime and bear to live with it. Death, suffering, and despair were common to Simon Wiesenthal that he questioned his own religious faith because he asks why would his God allow the Holocaust happen to his people to be slaughter and not do anything to save them. During Simon Wiesenthal time as a Jewish Holocaust, Simon was invited to a military hospital where a dying Nazi SS officer wanted to have a conversation. The Nazi SS officer told Simon his story of his life and confesses to Simon of his horrific war crimes. Ultimately, the SS officer wanted forgiveness for what he done to Simon’s Jewish people. Simon Wiesenthal could not respond to his request, because he did not know what to do with a war criminal that participate in mass genocide to Simon’s people. Simon Wiesenthal lives throughout his life on asking the same crucial question, “What would I have done?” (Wiesenthal 98). If the readers would be on the exact situation as Simon was
Gluckel of Hameln was a seventeenth century Jewish woman from Hamburg who wrote a lengthy memoir in Yiddish. While she was not a famous person in her time, Gluckel's memoir has been regarded as one of the most important documents for European Jewish history, of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and the earliest autobiography written by a Jewish woman. Beginning in 1690, Gluckel's diary of a German Jewish widow is addressed to her fourteen children, and is written as an undertaking as a kind of therapy after her husband's death, to get her through her sadness and, "melancholy thoughts." She writes to her children reassuring them that she is not writing these memoirs as a book of morals, but rather the memoir is an attempt to include her children into her experiences, memories and life. In her memoir she explains how she directed the financial and personal destinies of her children, how she engaged in trade, while promoting the welfare of her large family.
The Holocaust. A subject most people would like to forget but shouldn't. People must find out as much as possible about it so history won't repeat itself. Millions of Jewish men, women, and children , of all strata were persecuted because of what? Nothing besides the fact that they were Jewish. Most Jews living in Germany, Austria, Poland, France or practically anywhere else in Europe were sent to concentration camps. There they were either tortured or killed.
The unimaginable actions from German authorities in the concentration camps of the Holocaust were expected to be tolerated by weak prisoners like Wiesel or death was an alternate. These constant actions from the S.S. officers crushed the identification of who Wiesel really was. When Wiesel’s physical state left, so did his mental state. If a prisoner chose to have a mind of their own and did not follow the S.S. officer’s commands they were written brutally beaten or even in severe cases sentenced to their death. After Wiesel was liberated he looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t even recognize who he was anymore. No prisoner that was a part of the Holocaust could avoid inner and outer turmoil.
In Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower on the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness the author is asked to fulfill a dying solider last wish to forgive him because of the crimes he has committed against the Jewish people of the Holocaust. When Wiesenthal is asked for forgiveness, he simply leaves the room. Wiesenthal states that the encounter with the dying man left “a heavy burden” (Wiesenthal 55) on him. The confessions in which he admitted to have “profoundly disturbed [him]” (Wiesenthal 55). As Wiesenthal tries to make sense of what he has encountered he begins to make excuses for why the man might have done what he did. He say...
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
Tennessee Williams is known to be a Southern playwright of American drama. Williams knew how to show haunting elements like psychological drama, loneliness, and inexcusable violence in his plays. Critics say Williams often depicted women who were suffering from critical downfalls due to his sister Rose Williams. Rose was always fighting with a mental health condition known as schizophrenia all her life. The character Laura in The Glass Menagerie is always compared to Rose, because they were both socially awkward and very quiet girls. This may be true, but one can look at Blanche DuBois from A Street Car Named Desire shadows his sister’s life and characteristics more than Laura did. In the obituary of Rose Williams that was written by Philip Hoare, he says, “She grew up outgoing, using make-up earlier than other girls, and was remembered as “very pretty and a bit standoffish” (Hoare). This parallel sounds remarkably like Blanche and does not sound like Laura’s characteristics. Laura never wore make up and her personality did not keep others distant. She was distant to others, because of her disability. Also Roses down fall is very similar to Blanche DuBois down fall in the play and end result. Laura never has a down fall in The Glass Menagerie. Laura seems to have hope in the end of the play. Laura was a tribute to show Rose’s innocence, but Blanche was to show Rose’s true colors. Tennessee Williams uses elements of appearance, age, gentleman callers, sexuality, and the fear of homosexuality to show his sisters down fall in the character Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
The major idea I want to write about has to do with the way Mrs. Hale stands behind Mrs. Wright even though it seems like everyone else especially (the men) would rather lock her up and throw away the key. We see this right away when she gets on the County Attorney for putting down Mrs. Wright’s house keeping. I find this to be wonderfully symbolic in that most women of this time usually allowed the men to say whatever they wanted about their sex, never standing up for themselves or each other
Susan Glaspell in Trifles explores the repression of women. Since the beginning of time, women have been looked down upon by men. They have been considered “dumb” and even a form of property. Being physically and emotionally abused by men, women in the early 1900’s struggled to break the mold formed by society.
"You're going to go through tough times - that's life. But I say, 'Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.' See the positive in negative events” (Osteen, n.d.). This quote by Joel Osteen is relevant to every person’s life because bad circumstances are imminent. With this to say, people need to see the good in every circumstance rather than focus on the negatives in life. The manner in which a person handles difficult circumstances is contrasted in Elie Wiesel's novel Night and the movie "Life is Beautiful.” Both of these stories follow a father and son as they experience the Nazi’s concentration camps during the Holocaust. While the ambiance is similar in both stories, the manner in which the protagonists define their Holocaust experience
According to the Merriam -Webster Online Dictionary an assumption is a belief that something is true or a fact or statement that is taken for granted. Susan Glaspell wrote "Trifles" to demonstrate the male assumption that women are insignificant members in a male dominated society. Because the men underestimate them, the women are able to prove they are not insignificant. The improper assumptions by men toward women can have dire consequences, as demonstrated in Glaspell's world. Combating these narcissistic assumptions displayed by men can result in a unity among women that can overcome any male caused disrespect and oppression.
In the mysterious play “Trifles”, written by Susan Glaspell, the county attorney desperately tries to uncover the works behind the death of Mr. Wright. He was found dead in his bed with a rope around his neck that evening. The number one suspect of this crime is his wife Mrs. Wright. Mr. Hale, the closest neighbor had discovered Mr. Wright’s body because he wanted him to go out with the guys. When he requested this information to Mrs. Wright, she calmly told him about her knowledge of her husband’s inability to breathe... The question that surfaced throughout the play was whether or not Mrs. Wright killed her husband. This case was looked upon that she did because she did not contact the authorities of his death immediately. She was soon arrested and put in jail. The sheriff of this little town, sent Ms. Hale and
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles explores the unequal relationship between men and women in the early 20th century. How do you think the power relationship between the two genders was reversed at the end of the play? In the 20th century females were just meant to be at home, taking care of the house, making sure everything ran smooth. Women weren’t allowed to vote. They couldn’t go out alone. A women’s place was behind her husband and making sure he looked good, in every aspect. Weather it was political or not. The way they weren’t supposed to dress was extremely different, they weren’t allowed to go out showing skin. At the start of the play we see how the detective states that the house isn’t as clean as it should be. The jars in the kitchen