What I Saw And How I Lied Essay

The book I chose, What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell, stood out to me immediately. The first thing that caught my attention was the setting, as it is based in 1948. This is peculiar because it is right when World War II ended, which is a time period that I am not too familiar with. I was eager to discover whether the setting would play a role in the plot of the novel or not. Furthermore, a basic description of the plot also persuaded me to select the book because it was described as a coming of age story for a young girl and those types of novels always allow me to obtain the deepest insights and connections. What I Saw and How I Lied is about a girl named Evie who has just had her father return home from the war. Evie’s family and

her went back to a normal routine until her father suggests they take a vacation to Florida. On the vacation, Evie meets people in the hotel that impact her life greatly.

First, she meets a glamorous couple, in which she becomes close with the woman who is named Mrs. Grayson. This couple is later revealed as being Jewish and are kicked out of the hotel, opening Evie’s eyes to reality. She also encounters a soldier who served under her Father during the war, and immediately begins falling for him. But, there are lots of secrets that surround him as he is much older than her, making the girl and her parents fight about youth, adulthood, and the importance of family and trust. Mainly, the book focuses on the theme message of the loss of innocence. Evie, who in the beginning of the book wants to grow up as fast she can, realizes the pureness of youth after being faced with the true reality of adulthood. She experiences this after witnessing a hotel manager throw out Mr. and Mrs. Grayson for being Jewish, in which Evie says “‘They’re leaving in the morning. Peter you don’t understand, the manager. He enjoyed it. I don’t get it’” (Blundell 144). This quote expresses Evie realizing the cruelty of the world. She did learn information about World War II and the Holocaust, but it was different than her actually observing it before her

eyes. It appears that Evie was unaware of any discrimination that existed around her, and it forces her to question whether others were as oblivious to it as she was. Peter responds to Evie’s rant, saying “That’s a good thing, a good thing that you don’t get it” (Blundell 144). Peter perceives Evie’s innocence , as she doesn’t know the brutality that awaits her when she gets older. He knows that Evie should hold on to that pureness as long as she can, because she can never get it back. But, Evie learned later that the hotel she was staying at had banned Jews from vacationing there, explaining why the Graysons were told to leave. This forces her to finally uncover the truth about what it really means to grow up. It intrigued me that Anti-Semitism was still occurring in the book, even after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. I became curious to know whether the Holocaust had any effect on the treatment of Jews, even in modern day, leading me to my GRQ. The topic is interesting to me because I never recognized how poorly Jew’s were treated, even after the way. I was always under the assumption that people disagreed with Hitler and the propaganda that spread about any person not qualified for his Aryan race. It surprises me that even in the United States, the Anti-Semitism that swept Germany and influenced citizens to view Jews differently, also came across seas and most likely to other parts of the world. I anticipate to discover about my topic that a lot more people mistreated Jews after the war then I expected. I believe I will find lots of propaganda that was spread not only in Germany, but across the world. Hopefully, I can find specific examples where Jews were mistreated. I predict the research will reveal about my topic that the Germans aren’t the only ones to blame for the genocide that occurred. Although they enforced it, other people viewed Jews just the same as Hitler did, and should be held accountable for their views of inequality.