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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
In conclusion, the way that Griffin’s untraditional way of writing history gives us a better understanding of history as a whole. With the way that Griffin deals with the evidence at hand, by being an empathetic listener/person and an analytical historian. This allows that reader to compare his/her judgment with what Griffin said or how she felt. Griffin inserting herself into Heinrich Himmler’s life lets the reader get another account of how Himmler could have felt during that moment in his life. The reader most likely has bias already of him being evil and a vile man. Whereas, Griffin’s untraditional writing gives the reader another look at why he could have made the decisions he did so the reader could understand this side of history. Understanding
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
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.
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.
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.
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
The Meaning Of The Title “Our Secret”, A Chapter From “A Chorus Of Stones” by Susan Griffin