How many people are empathetic to the sufferings of those around them? How many people actively work to alleviate the pain of those in compromised situations? Furthermore, how many people still continue to help others when they themselves are down? Very few people could honestly declare that they do all of those things, and that is probably because it is difficult to have such a heightened sense of both human dignity and selflessness. But Yakov Bok, Jewish man living in Kiev at the turn of the century, is both selfless and ethical. In tsarist Russia in the early twentieth century, millions of people, particularly Jews, were being persecuted against. The Fixer tells the story of Yakov Bok's wrongful imprisonment for the alleged blood ritual …show more content…
Upon discovering that the man was a member of the Black Hundreds, a well-known and powerful anti-Semitic organization, Yakov is hesitant to save the man. "Let him shift for himself, he thought. Frightened, he ran to the corner, then ran back. Grabbing the anti-Semite under the arms he began to drag him to the doorway of the house in front of which he had fallen, when he heard a cry down the street" (29). In the beginning of the novel, Yakov was not as commendable in his actions. He was simply a good man, but not worthy of exceptional praise. Throughout the entire novel, Malamud portrays Yakov as the common man who is universally relatable. Yakov quickly shifts into a man willing to put his life on the line for the sake of others. However, Malamud does this so gradually and naturally that it seems the obvious choice for Yakov to make. Malamud seems to have created Malamud to be a metaphor for the common man, and the power of this metaphor emphasizes the motif that all people should have deep respect for human dignity. Yakov, despite his flaws, completely recognizes the value of all human life, no matter the person's negative attributes. Therefore, Yakov puts his safety on the line and sees Maximovitch safely back to his
The first thing to address while discussing the author’s purpose is to examine the motivation of the main character, Raskolnikov. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov becomes an ubermensch, and part of this is that he does not take into account
When many think of the Holocaust as a solely negative experience, and while it may seem easy to write the event off as a dark time in history that seems remote and unlikely to affect us today, there are some positive results, including the lessons that it brings for current and future humanity. The lessons that the Holocaust brings are applicable to every person in the world. While many of these lessons do focus on the negative aspects of the Holocaust, like what circumstances permit such a vast genocide and how many people can die because of widespread racial hatred, there are also those that focus on how some people, in all parts of Europe and throughout the world, retained their good human nature during the Holocaust. For example, what made some gentiles in Europe during that time willing and able to help Jews. Currently, Yad Vashem has recognized 26,513 rescuers throughout the world (Names), and the actual number of rescuers could likely be close to twice that amount (Baron,1). It is important that we analyze the reasons behind these rescuers’ choices to be upstanders instead of bystanders because we can learn about our own motivations when we face decisions between helping others and protecting ourselves, and possibly those we love, from harm. Fulfilling one’s self-interest was a potential motivation for helping Jews that will only be briefly addressed. This type of rescue potentially benefitted both the Jews and the Gentile rescuers; these Gentiles only helped Jews survive because they found personal gain, likely social or economic, in the action (Baron). However, in the situation that existed while rescuing the Jews, most efforts included the high possibility that both the rescuer and the rescued would end up worse off than they had begun with no potential for personal gain on either side. So those rescuers’ motivations are less easily explainable.
As the war dwindled down, the Bilecki family lingered to their Polish home. Though they were rich in heart, the friction between the slips of tinted cash and the jangling of the metal coins were the only sound that seemed to be worth hearing. Sadly, for them there was a lack of it. The Jews that they saved acted as their guardian angel, as the Bilecki clan did for them. From all around the world, across the sea, the Jews kept them from malnutrition and naked chills. It wasn’t until 1998 that the secret of the Bilecki kindness was unveiled. Not only did they get the recognition they deserve, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous had planned an infinitesimal surprise. Waiting, as the sounds of aircrafts roared, stood five of the survivors the Bilecki family had guided to asylum. The vulnerability of the raw moment was exposed as they shared their tears. The applause throbbed emphatically like the robust flapping of an angel’s wings. Their life saving feat did not go unacknowledged by the Righteous Among the Nations. Their unselfish deeds of valor and grace set themselves into being heroes.
Several adolescents in today's world are wanting to grow up to become independently at a young age and decide on their own to leave school. In J.D. Salinger novel “The Catcher in the Rye” he introduces the life of Holden Caulfield a seventeen year old boy who experiences difficult times in his life. Holden was a young boy that was kicked out from several schools. When he was going to high school they school was going to kick him out because he was failing four classes and passing one which was English, but before they kicked him out he decided to leave and quit school. In today's world, there are still several young people that are experiencing and making their own decisions for what they have been through in life.
The novel The Catcher In The Rye, by J.D. Salinger, contains many complex symbols, many of the symbols in the book are interconnected. A symbol is an object represents an idea that is important to the novel. I believe the most important symbol in this novel is Holden 's idea of being the "catcher in the rye".
J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye is widely recognized as one of the most self-destructive novels ever written. The novel’s protagonist Holden Caulfield is known for his anti-social behavior and his self-loathing, self-isolating character in the book. Holden’s traits could widely be compared to Napoleon Dynamite the protagonist of the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite directed by Jared Hess. Napoleon is characterized by his clichéd “school nerd” behavior and of course his own self-isolating habit just like Holden. Like Holden, Napoleon tries to put down people to isolate him from others. But even though Holden and Napoleon are alike on how they assume the traits of the people they meet,
William Butler Yeats a writer and irish poet once said, “The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.” In the book, “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J. D. Salinger, a boy named “Holden” is dealing with the consequences of growing up and losing innocence. The story details the importance of being a kid and going through maturity. It also shares the knowledge of learning from mistakes and growing up. Holden experiences all of these elements through loneliness and innocence throughout the book.
Throughout Borowski’s collection of short stories, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” various characters have been deceived into their own executions. The thought of being led to one’s own death without even knowing is what went through the minds of many Jews during the Holocaust. These victims had no control or say in their fates and faced the judgment without any sympathy or remorse from their executers. Although the victim’s futures were for the most part condemned, as they got closer and closer to death, few never lost hope that some miraculous intercession could drastically change their fate for the
Babi Yar, a poem written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, tells the story of the Nazi invasion into a small part of Russia, in which, throughout the duration of World War II, over one-hundred thousand Jews, Gypsies and Russian POW's were brutally murdered. However, what is unique about this particular perspective is that the narrator is not a Jew, but a mere observer who is aghast at the atrocities that took place during the Holocaust. It is through allusions, as well as other literary devices, that Yevtushenko elucidates caustically the absurdities of the hatred that caused the Holocaust, in addition to the narrator's identification with the Jews and their history of oppression.
The Holocaust was a traumatizing and depressing time period in history due to the Nazis in the leadership of their dictator Adolf Hitler. The Nazis were a Political Party during World War ΙΙ from 1941 through 1945. Many Jews during this time were discriminated, murdered, and humiliated in front of many other Jews and Germans. “Six million Jews died in a merciless way at the hands of the Nazis” (Sherbok 1). The Holocaust is an unforgettable period in history that left a scar on many Jews including Vladek. Vladek was a Jew and a survivor of the Holocaust that experienced and witnessed several tragedies during this time. The war was
Holden says that while he was at Pencey Prep if anyone ever stole anything from him that he would go down to their room and bang on the door and demanded his belongings back and maybe even sock someone in the face for taking his belongings. As we learned early on in the book, Holden is all talk and no walk. After talking himself up to be a tough guy Holden says that he probably would have just stood there and told them that on second thought they weren't his belongings to begin with and that they could keep them.
“Is The Catcher in the Rye, as a work of literature still relevant for today’s youth?”
Nobody really can get through life without help, eventually along the way there is something thrown our way that we cannot deal with alone. When you look back at one of the most confusing and unfair times in the world's history, the Holocaust, you can see that this was true for all of the families affected. George Gottlieb, Krystyna, and Elie Wiesel all needed help from upstanders on their road to surviving the Holocaust,and without it survival would have been nearly impossible, these are three different cases that all have one glowing similarity, that being the contributions of others to help them fight the persecution, and from all of these testimonies we can draw something that should be applied today.
In J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, a young man named Holden Caulfield is on the edge of adulthood. He is a bright kid but struggles with many mental diseases mainly because of the passing of his brother Allie. This has caused him to not focus on school and has got him kicked out of many schools. He did not have many friends and he did not like many people. He thought of everyone as phony. Holden does not want to confront adulthood in fear of losing his childhood because of the fear of change, conformity to the phony world and the passing of his younger brother Allie.
They have just learned about Ilyich’s death, and they outwardly react in the way expected of them. However, these reactions are only for show; internally, each man approaches Ilyich’s death with a slight air of annoyance at the inconvenience the death causes, speculations about what Ilyich’s death means for his own career and his friends’ careers, and relief in the fact that, once again, another man has died instead of himself. Along with this feeling of relief also comes a sort of denial; the men all recognize that Ivan Ilyich is mortal, but deny their own mortality, believing death to be some isolated incident that only happens to other men. They go through the motions of one who has lost an acquaintance, only doing what is socially acceptable and moving on from the death at the first possible