Analysis Of The Book ' Milkweed ' By Jerry Spinelli

What happens to a person who has no identity at a time when identity can be one’s last hope – their salvation or a mark for death. In his novel Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli invites readers to experience the Holocaust through the eye of a young boy who misunderstands everything except the love of family and the different forms it can take. Misha, an orphan boy is taken in by a young group of Jewish thieves. He is simple minded of his own identity because Misha adopts the identity of the people around him in his life, first as a gypsy, then as a Jew when he follows his friend’s family into the ghetto. Readers are forced to focus on the simple acts of caring that takes place in a time of suffering because Misha is unable to understand what is really going on around him. Hope and selfless acts of love still exists during a time of havoc in the Warsaw ghetto, is shown through the innocent eyes of Misha. By using techniques such as dramatic irony, revealing characters’ emotion, and a unique choice of a narrator, Spinelli successfully makes his readers to feel empathy.

Social status often establishes one 's credibility and integrity within a society. The power that social status has, encourages people to heavily focus on it. With this focus on social status ever pressing, one’s identity often gets intertwined with and reliant on their place in the hierarchy of society. People become fixated on one idea they have of a person in a certain social class, that anybody who breaks out of specific stereotypes may often cause anger amongst others. In the short story “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor, the main character, Mrs. May, is obsessive about the way others perceive her and her place in society. Mr. May’s identity is so strictly tied to her desire to get to a higher social class and her notions how society

Point of view is the narrator’s position in the story being told. Point of view changes the story drastically, since you are hearing different stories and opinions by different characters in a story. Even if the plot is the same, the point of view will change the entire story. Point of view can also create tension between different characters. For example, if you are hearing the thoughts of one character in the story, and the actions of another character who is aware of these rude thoughts, the reader knows that the two characters tension between each other will eventually rise up to a certain point that a problem will occur. Point of view creates a lot of tension in the two books, Confetti Girl and Tortilla Sun, between the narrator and their parent. Both books

Aharon Applefelds’ short story Tzili depicted what it would be like to be a maturing teen on the run. Readers will comprehend the true meaning behind the work of Tzili, the tone, connotation, plot, as well as the reason why certain characters were chosen to be portrayed within the story. These characters include: Tzili, Katerina, Mark and Linda. Applefeld’s memoir Story of a Life will also be referenced throughout the analysis in order to provide a parallel to the work of Tzili.

The Jewish family soon gets taken to the other side of the wall, a slum area, the ghetto. Misha still follows his pattern, goes back and forth between the wall and the outside world by just a very small hole on the wall, only he can go through. Uri slowly leaves Misha behind by doing his own whereabouts since Misha is doing fine on his own. Slowly questioning the main character, he only focuses on what he’s doing. After spending months with mostly the Jewish family, he starts to realize the reality around him. He didn’t fit in with the Milgrom's,. In fact, his story didn’t suited him. He leaves his fabricated life to start over. “My identity as a Gypsy vanished. Gone were the seven wagons, seven brothers, five sisters, Greta the speckled mare. Deep down I guess I had always known my Gypsy history was merely Uri’s story, not reality. I didn’t miss it.. When you own nothing, it’s easy to let things go.” pg.104) He slowly thought less and less about the orphans and more to the Milgrom’s. Later the tables get turned. Janina who is more of a sister than a best friend, follows Misha everywhere he goes. She copies him, sets him up for failure, and seems more “needy” than she first seemed to be. From how Misha treated Uri by wandering off, causing trouble, creating more responsibility, is now being inflicted back to him from Janina. From a new character change, Janina is now

If I had lived during the Holocaust, the hardships would include lack of shelter, starvation, and survival. To start, people struggled to find a safe shelter. The book Milkweed is about a boy who has to change the locations of his shelter to be able to survive. I know that during this time period a lot of people who were jewish were taken to concentration camps were they were forced to work and were treated harshly. Because of this people had to change the location of their shelter to escape getting caught. Additionally, people also had to face the struggles of starvation. Since hitler and his nazis were killing off a lot of people, the people who owned food stores could no longer sell food. This meant that people couldn’t get the same amount

The main characters are people who want to survive but there is a long and difficult way in front of them which they will have to conquer. However, they have already adapted to this kind of life and they are survivors. This page is interesting and admirable because of the middle panel where the readers can see Anja and Vladek from behind going in the unknown direction. They are singled out because other survivors seem to know where they are going because one of the people says: “We’ll be hiding at this address. When you find a safe place, try to contact us, Vladek” (Spiegelman 125). The survivors care about the well-being of one another. Anja and Vladek are depicted from the upper angle which implies their vulnerability and the fact that they have no shelter. There is nowhere to go and the only path is through the road in the shape of the swastika. It is clear that they are the survivors of the Holocaust, but it does not mean that they have solved all of their problems. They are alive and they have to find new life now which is going to be difficult. It can be observed from the panel that they are elegant and brave people and they are Art’s parents. They are holding hands, because their intimacy is all they have and they are probably wearing all of the clothes they possess. It is obvious that they were people who were not poor, but the Holocaust happened and made them lose their

Shelby Veenstra Mrs. Warwick Language Arts 8-3 16 March 2015 Rough Draft Around six million Jews died during The Holocaust, when Hitler was in charge. He starved them, killed them, and even bombed them. Milkweed a Historical Fiction Novel by Jerry Spinelli is about a young child named Misha, who lives with the Milgroms in the Warsaw Ghetto and steals food fighting to survive, until trains take Jews to a concentration camp, while Misha moves to America.

Milkweed is a book about a boy who is called Gypsy, Stoptheif and Jew. He becomes friends with a group of orphaned Jewish boys and lives with them. He is given a name and a backstory from Uri, who protects him. The name is Misha Pilsudski. Misha wants to become a Nazi when he gets older because of their boots but changes his mind. Misha meets a Jewish girl named Janina Milgrom, her family is forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto. Misha eventually becomes part of the family and lives with them in the ghetto. Every night Misha slips through the 2 brick hole in the wall around the ghetto, to steal food. While Misha is stealing food he sees Uri and is warned to escape from the ghetto because trains are going to take the Jews away. Misha comes home

This collection of stories begins when the narrator Yunior and his brother Rafa who are 8 and 12, are sent to live with their uncle for the summer so their mother can work. Their father abandoned them when Yunior was 4 and their family lives in poverty, sometimes having to forgo food for clothes and other necessities. Their mother works sometimes 14 hour shifts, at a local chocolate factory while their grandfather watches them. When Yunior is 9 his father returns from the United States to bring them back. They live in an apartment and set up a new community in New Jersey. Although they still live in poverty, they do not want for food or other basic necessities. The stories then jump forward years to when Yunior is in high school and living with his mother. He works and helps pay the rent and other bills

The story is based on a real man who now travels the world telling his survival story. At the beginning of the war, he and his family are forced to live with four other families in the Krakow ghetto. He is kicked out of his school and his friends turn on him. He is no longer allowed to do the things he was allowed to do before. On some nights Yanek would assist his father in making bread for the family.

Lola was told to go alone, her Grandma tells her that they will meet again in this life but sadly what they do not know is that shortly after Lola left, everyone in the Ghetto was killed including her Grandma. So Lola meets this woman, who quickly ushered Lola quietly to her home where she is given a room, but told that if the dog starts barking to hide under the bed. One day a couple arrived. They obviously were not strangers to the family because the dog did not bark so they came in and began talking to Lola. They were trying to find out if she was Jewish or not by what language she spoke. Suddenly Lola had a thought that she should pretend that she was deaf and mute which ended up saving her life, because the couple after that left her alone. It is not long before the Ukrainian woman’s son got tired of Lola Being there. He Hated Jews so he told them that in the morning he was going to take her to the Gestapo. So in the middle of the night the Ukrainian woman woke up Lola and sent her to her Sisters house. Lola is then put in a hole beneath the floor with 3 other people, Rose, her husband, and their little daughter who is around Lola’s age. Rose does not like Lola being there because it meant giving up the little food they already have. One day while they are sitting there Lola finds that she had lice, which ended up spreading to everyone. Rose one day gets tired of it so she asks for scissors and cuts off Lola’s hair and her daughter’s hair too. Lola ended up staying in that hole until the year 1944. It was the year when the Jews were officially liberated. One night while the lady they stayed with was asleep Lola and Rose’s family decided to crawl out of the hole, so they do and head to a little

It was a terrifying transition going from the average life of a thirteen year old boy to that of a contained Jew. In school Miska Freudenberg had always been the popular student. His plethora of friends meant the world to him. So, when all of that was taken away Miska was devastated. In the camp there was no one to call his friend. That was until Shmuel came along. Shmuel was only eight years old, but the camp matured him greatly. Miska instantly grew attached to him; it was almost as if he had a little brother again. Miska stopped caring about himself and started obsessing over his only friend’s well-being. They had a spot they called their own by the gate of the camp. It had a beautiful view of the thick forest nearby. Everyday was the same

Niko Hofmeister was only 13 years old when his family moved to a small town near Auschwitz death camp. At first, Niko had been completely oblivious about his surroundings and was constantly involved in sports and activities that took him away from time with his family. But all this wasn't enough for Niko and after the countless hours of chores and playing sports outside in his small, gated community with his brother Kaspar he got intrigued with what his father did for a living. Niko’s family was never poor, but they were never rich either. They lived in a cottage on a hill in a small, gated community with few neighbors and no activity in it. When the family first moved they were very happy, but that slowly went away as they went through the same routine throughout the day. It grew boring, and the family seeked for adventure. The dad, Jon Rolf, has a mysterious job unknown to the children, but keep secret by the parents. Although, one day Niko got tired of his lifestyle and decided to change so he set his mind to get out of his gated community and see the world. He knew only one way to get out and that was to sneak out.

Range.—Giant milkweed is native to West Africa as far south as Angola, North and East Africa, Madagascar, the Arabian Peninsula, southern Asia, and Indochina to Malaysia (Rahman and Wilcock 1991). The species is now naturalized in Australia, many Pacific islands, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands. Ecology.—Giant milkweed favors open habitat with little competition. This condition is most completely met in overgrazed pastures and rangeland. Other common habitats are beachfront dunes, roadsides, and disturbed urban lots. The species grows in dry habitat (150 to 1000 mm precipitation) and sometimes in excessively drained soils in areas with as much as 2000 mm of annual precipitation. Giant milkweed may be found in areas