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Analysis Of Our Secret By Susan Griffin

Decent Essays

In Susan Griffin’s work titled “Our Secret”, she discusses the relationship between the present-day and the earlier life of different people. She also compares the private and public lives of other people. Her piece is set during World War Two in the 1940s. Throughout the entire piece, Griffin compares the lives of people evolved in World War Two, people who were affected by the war, and her own life. She shows how even though they lived separate lives, they are still closely related. One of the people that Griffin uses as an example in her piece is Laura. Laura is someone whose family was significantly affected by the war. She lived a life of mystery, her family lived just blocks from nuclear missiles and it was never spoken of in her …show more content…

Griffin’s family was not involved in the Holocaust; however, she feels that she is still connected to the time and has still been affected by those involved and those who were killed. Like other characters Griffin uses in her piece, she herself had an irregular life. Her family was not accepting that they were related to one another, they never discussed their issues even though they were undoubtedly there. Griffin’s mother was often drunk and her family only kept up with their appearances and behavior because of her grandmother’s coaching. Another thing Griffin does in her piece is compare her lives to those involved in the Holocaust. For example, a character named Heinrich Himmler, who played an excessive part in the Holocaust, had similar life. Griffin states that “just as in my family, the Himmlers’ gentility was a thinly laid surface, maintained no doubt only with great effort”(389). I believe Griffin uses this point to show that even though she also had a rough life, she did not retaliate and partake in something like the Holocaust. Instead she attempted to better her life. She uses this point to show that Himmler had other options and his family was not to blame for his actions. Heinrich Himmler had rather rough life growing up and I believe his engagements in the Holocaust have to do with his early life. His family had just gotten out of a bumpy time of poverty. Himmler not only had a rough time growing up at

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