Literature encapsulates the human experience, reflecting facets of our culture, traditions, and beliefs. Literature functions as a tool to develop and explore empathetic links with other individuals and can provide insight into experiences removed from our own reality. Peter Fischl’s poem ‘Little Polish Boy’ is one such text in which we can attain a unique understanding of the horrors catalysed by war. An expression of Fischl’s own Holocaust experience, this poem is set in WWII, and addressed as a letter to an innocent child of the war from a photograph Fischl found years after the war ended. We can also learn of the loss and grief children face in times of war through the picture book ‘a Soldier, a Dog and a Boy’ by Libby Hathorn. The story follows a young boy orphaned by the Battle of Somme and he’s only left to survive with his dog before an Australian soldier comes to his rescue. These texts allow us to reach a better understanding of the different effects conflict has on children.
As a child, Peter Fischl was subjected to harsh anti-Semitic laws, separated from his family, and sought refuge in southern California years after the end of the war where he stumbled across a photograph of the little Polish boy. The powerful impact the image had upon him inspired the composition of the poem four years after the occasion. Fischl conveys feelings of sorrow and regret as he recalls the inhumanity of society using symbolism, “Now will know/What fear is in/the darkness”.
In the book “Night” written Elie Wiesel, Wiesel wants readers to know the pain and struggles he had to face in the holocaust. In 1944, in the village of Sighet, Transylvania, a boy named Elie was taken from his home and was taken to a concentration camp and spends time talking about being invaded by the Nazi. The purpose of the book was the remembrance of the holocaust and how it causes him to lose faith and his identity. Although the concentration camps were a bad place the people were forced to work, the rhetorical devices imagery, symbolism, and diction is used to present loss in faith and identity.
In an excerpt from his book Night, entitled “Eight Short, Simple Words”, Elie Wiesel provides readers a glimpse into the unimaginable suffering many Jews faced during the Holocaust. The story is told through the perspective fifteen-year old Wiesel, as he, along with his family, is brought into Auschwitz. The disturbing details mentioned in the story are horrid enough, but Wiesel’s use of symbolism and foreshadowing strengthen the impact of each word, making the tone of the writing more powerful. These elements, when combined with Wiesel’s first-person perspective, make the story more personable, and, as a result, the readers are subjected to the intense emotions that Wiesel’s harsh reality inflicted upon him.
The defining characteristics of WW1 were its sickening violence and its immense death toll so, understandably, many pieces of war literature aim to present the horrors of war in order to unflinchingly reveal the true experiences of the soldiers. However, Journey’s End by R.C Sherriff and A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry also focus on the emotional aspect of war and the relationships it created and destroyed. The war forced people of every background to rely on and interact with each other while it also wrenched soldiers away from their families, introducing unique tensions between people that would not have existed otherwise. However, it is debatable which form, Sherriff’s play or Barry’s novel, is most effective in presenting these relationships.
In the early 1940s, over six million Jews were slaughtered due to the irrational belief of their imperfection. Each day, people make decisions, and those decisions are guided by thoughts, and everyone has the right to those opinion; however, many people fail to believe that their thoughts and actions can affect the lives of others. There are people with a strong moral compass that carry around the weight of the horrific actions of others such as Peter L. Fischl, author of the poem, “To the Little Polish Boy Standing with His Arms Up.” Throughout the poem, the author expresses how some people are in denial but others are haunted by the horrific events of the past. The narrator speaks to this young Polish boy, standing with his arms above his head, waiting patiently for his demise. Life is full of difficulties; if there were no struggles in life then it would not be life at all. The author creates a lead into the poem with the title, using a symbol for vulnerability. If someone stands with their arms in the air it means they are surrendering, they are vulnerable and defenseless. As the little Polish boy walks past the guards, he has his arms raised, knowing he has no say in what is yet to come. In the poem “To the Little Polish Boy Standing With his Arms Up” Fischl uses repetition and symbolism to enhance, that one’s actions affect the lives of others, and at times those on the sidelines have a worsening effect after all.
Words and actions have a large impact on the way you work with the world around you, they have the ability to make you feel indescribable emotions in every way. The poem “Little Boy,” written by B.H. Fairchild begins as a young boy questions his father’s hurtful past, as the speaker demonstrates that he asked the questions as he would’ve asked if he ever saw “Dimaggio or Mantle,” and develops into an examination of a lifeless relationship between father and son. In the poem the little boy’s persistent focus on the father’s brutal past reveals a case of PTSD from his involvement in WWII, and how it affects the advancement of an already bad and unsteady and unchanging relationship of a father and son.
The vivid description of the “kingdom of night” evokes a haunting landscape–a place devoid of hope and filled with darkness. The image of a bewildered and anguished boy stumbling into the “kingdom of night” encapsulates the horrors of the Holocaust. Listeners can almost visualize the boy’s terror and feel the darkness, the unknown, and the loss of innocence. Furthermore, Wiesel’s integration of stark imagery paints a moral landscape where neutrality and silence become accomplices to cruelty: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who
After reading two excerpts and a poem about children experiencing life during the Holocaust All the children had very different and similar experiences.The two excerpts are named “Until Then I Had Only Read about These Things in Books..” and Milkweed.The poem is named “The Guard”.
World War II was one of, if not, the most destructive conflict in all of human history. Over sixty million soldiers and civilians lost their lives due to the war. However, were lives the only thing lost in the war?. In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, Devon School offered the boys a place shielded by the war. When Leper Lepiller enlists in the army after watching a film about ski troops, a direct link was established between Devon School and the war. World War II suddenly became much more real than before.
Korwin discusses the actions of the Nazi party, clearly empathetic to the situation of the defenceless child. Diction, rhetorical questions, similes, symbolism and visual imagery are a few poetic devices used effectively in this piece. The prominent theme of war can be seem though out this poem consistently providing an emphasis of the fallacious atmosphere during the holocaust. s a result, a deep feeling of sympathy is felt for the boy. He is also compared to a “lost lamb,” another symbol of innocence and purity. However, despite the innocence that the boy has, it been corrupted by his experiences in the war. “Your face contorted with fear, grown old with knowledge beyond your years.” Is a good example of this. As shown in the examples symbolism
“A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load - little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it with my own eyes… those children in the flames.” (Elie Wiesel, 24) This memoir, told by Elie Wiesel in his book “Night” and published in 1956, describes his experiences surviving the Holocaust. He and his father are forced to endure extremely traumatic experiences. Throughout “Night”, there are moments that are incredibly powerful. These moments are powerful because it really shows how horrible the Holocaust was, and the terrors not only Elie went through, but that almost all Jewish people experienced.
How does the boy’s playing at war comment on the motivation for adults to wage war? On the horrifying carnage of the battlefield? Consider what message about war the child has learned from his picture books.
On one night the Wiesel and the other jews have to leave the concentration camp to another one. Wiesel tells of the darkness of this night and that they were accompanied by “[h]undreds of SS [that] appeared out of the darkness”. The opened gates ahead of him leaded to a “darker night”(Wiesel 84) ahead of them. This unsettling image symbolizes the everlasting uncertainty they have to live in the concentration camps. Furthermore the image conveys heavily on language relating to darkness and night.
The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person, and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche by giving the reader close up insight into common tribulations of war, but not in a necessarily expositorial sense.. He takes us into the minds of mere kids as they cope with the unbelievable and under-talked-about effects or rationalizing
As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.