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Psychological Effects Of Rosa In The Shawl

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Rosa, who symbolizes all mothers in the story, was suffering depression because she had good intentions for her kids but she became hopeless in this situation. Rosa was psychologically hurt during the war; also the prisoners in Zimbardo’s experiment were damaged psychologically due to the guard’s treatment to them. When Rosa’s daughter dies, Rose then became psychologically ill: “So she took Magda’s shawl and filled her own mouth with it, stuffed it in and stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up the wolf’s screech.”(Ozick 4). In a sense, the mother becomes the baby and loses faith because depression takes over after her baby died. She starts to lose her mind because she loses her hope. The psychological effect of Rosa can be related to the …show more content…

Ozick explains in “The Shawl,” how war can damage a person physically, which also affects them mentally. Rosa starts to lose hope regarding her infant’s health in addition to her own. Ozick explained, “The weight of Rosa was becoming less and less; Rosa and Stella were slowly turning into air” (Ozick 2). Rosa and Stella were becoming air because it’s been days since they have eaten anything. This can also be understood that they are dying and soon will vanish. Also, they suffer from the brutal environment condition around them. “Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell” (1). Ozick explains how brutal the weather felt to them. This explanation of the weather helps one to see what those people went through during the war; these conditions are hard for an infant like Magda to bear. It’s known that infants need warm temperatures and special care to live, but here Magda did not have the basic needs for a child to survive. To relate, in Zimbardo’s experiment the prisoners were subjected to physical pain as well. Zimbardo quotes an anonymous prison who speaks about physical violence: “the silent system was imposed upon me, and to even whisper to the man in the next cell resulted in being beaten by guards, sprayed with chemical mace, blackjacked, stomped, and thrown into a strip cell naked to sleep on a concrete floor without bedding, converting, wash basin, or even a toilet” (110). The prisoners faced torture under the control of the guards. Those prisoners can be compared to Magda. They are suffering pain but they do not have the ability to get rid of it because they are being controlled. The prisoners were treated as if they are not humans. The guards beat them and treated them like animals. Furthermore, war can affect a person physically, mentally and in fact, it even affects one's

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