Analysis Of Our Secret By Susan Griffin

The book is called Secrets in the Shadows by the author Anne Schraff. Anne grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She got a bachelor's and master’s degree from California State University. Since college she has been writing many books including one of the most famous written series called the Bluford Series. Her stories are written basically on her background and how she grew up as a child. A middle class neighborhood including African Americans, Mexicans, Arab, and Filipino’s. From reading some of her books her stories are from a real person’s point of view and the struggles they really go through. Some of her lessons in many of her books are topics such as finding love, value education, respect towards others, and the importance of family.

On April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau Am Inn, Austria to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl. In the early days of Hitler’s life, he was an unrestrained and carefree child who lived a happy life. His mother was very caring and affectionate towards him while his father spent most of his time either at work or following his hobby of keeping bees. Hitler had an older brother named Alois Hitler Jr. and an older sister named Angela, and a few years after he was born his mom gave birth to another son named Edmund and another sister named Paula. After his father retired and Hitler started to go to school his life began to change. He was no longer able to live his previous carefree lifestyle and now his strict father was going to be watching

Griffin's grandfather is an anti-Semite and looks at crime magazines. She describes his ignorance on page 361. "His eyes, no longer looking at me, blazed with a kind of blindness" (Griffin 361). Her grandfather takes the easy way out and reveals his ignorance through his stories and opinions of others. The point that she is trying to make is

Adolf Hitler was born 1908 in Austria to his mother, Klara ,and his drunk of a father, Alois(Schlesinger 7). He deeply loved his mother and worshiped his father. Though it may be thought otherwise, Hitler had a fairly ordinary childhood in Austria. His life as a young man showed no evidence of what he would grow up to be, but that doesn't mean he didn't have Demons. His father was a tyrant. He ruled his family with force and aggression, and regularly beat Adolf. He would often whip the family dog till it wet the floor. Alois Hitler died when Adolf was fourteen. With his father no longer there to enforce good grades, he started to study less and fail more. When he turned sixteen, he gave up completely, and dropped out.

Griffin also uses examples from her own family to expand upon the title’s meaning. Griffin claims her family was constantly pretending to be happy, perfect or aristocratic. In family photos, everyone smiled together and attempted to make it seem like nothing was wrong. The author claims that looking back on these pictures, this was clearly not true, as she can see the pain her father his hiding in one picture, or signs of trauma in another. The real conflict underneath was never truly revealed. The family also made attempts to appear aristocratic and high class when they really were not. Griffin claims that the family was aware that this was not true, but still attempted to keep up the ruse. Griffin writes:

99) Along with other narrators, Bromberg has “little to report about the next phase [1932 through the beginning of World War II] until they are directly affected by the war through military conscription or Allied bombing raids on their home town” (Bessel, p. 101). Herbert’s recurring theme is that “’Quiet’, ‘normal’ times, then, clearly leave behind few experiences that are imprinted on the memory and recalled in the narratives; ‘disturbed’, ‘bad’ times are filled with unique and extraordinary experiences, and come up at corresponding length in the life stories” (Bessel, p. 101).

In “Hungry” and “On Becoming Educated” by Joy Castro as well as “Our Secret” by Susan Griffin, personal and political history work in similar ways to uncover the magnitude of similarities everyone contains. Castro uses her personal stories to emphasize societal norms, in relation to feminism, and how they affect and have affected learning similarly in history and modern times. Griffin takes on a similar task, but she relates her childhood interactions with family to those affected by the Holocaust, particularly Heinrich Himmler. Both writers identify sections in which they utilize elements of autobiography to connect individual life to the larger cultural and political implications by placing similar stories in order and broadening their choice of words and phrases. Castro and Griffin portray exactly how similar actions and occurrences can be due to the way society influences people and their ignorance, deception, and hidden intentions.

A particular question that is seldom pondered over and yet is capable of carrying so many doubts within it: who are we? Who are we as a society who can do the things we do? Who are we who can suffer from them? Award winning poet and essayist Susan Griffin confronts these distinct questions in her work titled, “Our Secret”. Griffin believes that a basic understanding of the things that play a part in the growth of an individual is essential to understanding who we are. The way a child is raised dictates how that child is going to become later on in life. One of the distinct highlights of Griffin’s essay was her use of describing the progress of the V1 rockets in World War II. Griffin studies the aspects of human nature by using these missile developments as a metaphor to symbolize the raising of children and the factors that can influence a growing individual. One of the prime figures that Griffin uses pertaining to these growing individuals was Heinrich Himmler, leader of the Nazi secret police. Griffin uses Himmler as an example to demonstrate how big of a role a parental figure can play in the development of a person.

Heinrich Himmler was born October 7, 1900; He was a German politician, police administration, and military commander. He grew up in a comfortable and conservative Roman Catholic and middle class family. Himmler got his high school degree and got his degree in agriculture at the institute at the Institute of Technology in Munch. He was married to Margerete Boden and he had one daughter. Growing up he had suffered from health problems, including lung infections, typhoid fever and chronic gastrointestinal ailments.

Susan Griffin's "Our Secret" is a study in psychology. It is a look into the human mind to see what makes people do the things they do and in particular what makes people commit acts of violence. She isolates the first half of the twentieth century and in particular the era of the Second World War as a basis for her study. The essay discusses a number of people but they all tie in to Heinrich Himmler. He is the extreme case, he who can be linked directly to every single death in the concentration camps. Griffin seeks to examine Himmler because if she can discern a monster like Himmler than everyone else simply falls into place. The essay also tries to deduce why something like the Holocaust, although never mentioned directly, can

People usually move to the United States in order to get a better education than their home country can provide. Some people will proceed to the extreme of crossing the border illegally in order to find a better life. Even though the process is extremely long and enduring, most people abide the process of gaining citizenship in America. Although these people carry on through great lengths to achieve this they may not get what they had expected. This is the case in the poem “The Secret,” by Pablo Medina, in which the narrator describes his new life in the USA not to be as he had expected. Expecting to find a better life he left his home country, excited about the newfound opportunity to learn and more freedom than he had his home

First, Adolf Hitler would strike peoples thoughts as shocking or random but it somewhat explains the future of his life. "As a child, Adolf clashed frequently with his father. "Following the death of his younger brother, Edmund, in 1900, he became detached and introverted".(biography.com) his mother later on allowed him to drop out of high school, unlike Orwell who graduated from high school and went to college.Hitler then began working in vienna as a casual laborer and a watercolor painter. With these early experiences it has characterized in the future

Adolf Hitler did not have a really good early life at all. On April 20, 1889, Hitler was born in Branau am Inn, Austria. He grew up in a family with a stress of becoming an officer when he got out of college, and Hitler never wanted to. This was all his father’s idea. Hitler’s father was a custom officer who was always cold and strict him. For those reasons, Hitler hated him and his formal education. At primary school, Hitler was really popular because of his intelligence and his leadership qualities. However, secondary school was not easy and Hitler stopped trying his best. He quit with a hope that his father would see very little improvement on him, and then he would give up forcing Hitler become an officer and let him do what he wanted to be. As Witherbee writes, “He had abandoned his studies at the age of 16.” Unlike his father, Hitler’s mother, Klara Hitler, was a sweet mom who loved and pampered her son. Therefore, he adored her. His father passed away when he turned thirteen. When Hitler was a kid, he always wanted to become an artist. In 1907, Hitler

Hitler’s attitudes led to his becoming a rabid German nationalist. His ancestors too were peasants, but not serfs. Unlike Stalin, Hitler’s early years were not of hardship and poverty. He was never poor or harshly treated. His father moved up in the ranks in the service and retired with the highest rank open to a civil servant with his education. He had a secure income and a very high social standing and when he passed away he left his widow and children well provided for.

I recently read the book The Art of Secrets written by James Ksile. The book has about 255 pages. This book would most likely classify as Modern Realistic Fiction.