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
After living in the camps for a while, the mother “... couldn’t bear it anymore. The wind. The dust. The endless waiting. The couple next door constantly fighting. She hung a white sheet from a rope and called it a curtain and behind the white curtain she lay down on her cot and she closed her eyes and she slept” (Otsuka 94). Every day the same thing happened over and over again, and as a result, the mother started to show symptoms of depression including losing her appetite, having no motivation and a having a lost in interest. All days she continued to sleep in order for her to escape her depression and to dream of a better place. The mother lost emotional strength as disconnects from her children and the world around her. The overall weather and the cramped living conditions caused the mother to show symptoms of
An American machine gunner, Charles Yale Harrison, says in his novel, Generals Die in Bed: “[War] take[s] everything from us: our lives, our blood, our hearts; even the few lousy hours of rest, they take those, too. Our job is to give, and theirs is to take,” (Harrison, 26). In this example, Harrison explains how war is the most selfish and strongest of all evils; war continues to take everything someone has until they have nothing left to take. The war also created long-term effects for soldiers; one being shell-shock. This term is used to describe the damage of constant loud shelling during war which greatly affected those who were not exposed to shelling frequently (Unnamed). Another term that is still used today is PTSD, (“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”), which is used to describe the effect war had on the soldiers afterward (Unnamed). World War I brought major psychological disorders upon the soldiers during and after the war had ended leading to great damage for the rest of the victim’s
“Poor food – hard lodging – cold weather – fatigue – nasty cloaths- nasty cookery – vomit half my time – smoked out my senses – the Devil isn’t – I can’t Endure it – why are we sent here to starve and freeze” In Document C, they show the life of a Soldier. Now, do you see yet why I would leave? We travel too much and not with the right supplies besides guns, but still, I walk around half of the time with no shoes and freeze my toes off, do you know how much frostbite I got, you wouldn’t imagine. We get sick with many things like small pocks putrid fever, pneumonia, and dysentery. Although you may think that, this wasn’t that big a deal most people do and so do I. I love my family too much to go through this
In addition to conspicuous physical scars, victims of abuse are often left with less-visible damage to their mental state, both emotionally and spiritually. The consequences of emotional and spiritual suffering are explored in depth in the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel. In my opinion, the spiritual and emotional trauma experienced by Elie and the Jewish prisoners is more damaging than the physical effects. Firstly, their intense suffering results in a complete loss of faith for many characters after their life-changing experiences. Additionally, after time spent in the physically and mentally draining concentration camps, many of the prisoners resort to human survival instincts and leave behind their compassionate nature to stay alive. Finally,
While at Weedpatch, a government camp, Rosasharn meets Mrs. Sandry, a religious fanatic that warns her about the dangers of dancing, singing, and play acting that go on at the camp. She succeeds in frightening Rose of Sharon by stating that the babies of these “sinners” are born “dead and bloody” (310). After the woman leaves, Rosasharn is reduced to tears as she is convinced her baby will be born dead as Mrs. Sandry said and she once again mourns Connie’s abandonment. When Ma discovers her, she manages to get her out of her depression a bit by saying, “You’re jest one person. An’ they’s a lot of other folks” (300). What Ma is trying to say in the novel is “Your opinion of yourself is what matters, because everyone else is going to judge you, but only you can accept the judgment.”
Everyone who has taken a history course that goes through the 20th century knows about the atrocities performed in Nazi Germany; 11 million people exterminated and countless others put into concentration camps with unimaginable conditions. But most people do not try to explain how the German soldiers could do these things to other human beings. Primo Levi in his book Survival in Auschwitz attempts to answer this question. He begins by explaining the physical and psychological transformation of the prisoners and how that enabled the Germans to see the prisoners as inhuman and therefore oppress-able. Levi believes that the Germans treated the Jewish prisoners horrendously because of the prisoner’s
The tactics used in World War I were radically different than that of previous wars. The majority of the war was fought in the trenches, and the war itself seemed to have no end. Due to this, the psychological impact of the war was unlike anything that had been seen before. During the early days of the war, the soldiers, on both sides, seemed to lack the dedication that would have been necessary to exterminate their enemy. However, as the war progressed, the desire to avenge their fallen comrades overcame their ethics and they began to kill their enemy indiscriminately. Surviving soldiers experienced a phenomenon that was, at that time, referred to as shell shock. Today we refer to this phenomenon as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At this time, this psychological condition was misunderstood and the doctors lacked the training necessary to effectively treat this condition.
Trauma is not uncommon for victims of war, especially those who have been wounded by opposing forces. Mariatu has shared many traumatic events through her memoir, which help the reader further realize how grueling war can be. The following log shows 12 of these events, as well as the internal and
A young girl of 14, Stella barely holds on to her own life in the concentration camp, she desperately seeks comfort and protection. Like many others, Stella’s deplorable shape reverts her to an infantile state of mind, she constantly wants to be comforted, soothed and cared for. Stella is “jealous of Magda” (paragraph 1) and wants the shawl to herself. Like Magda, she wants “to be wrapped in a shawl” like “a round infant in arms” (paragraph 1). Although she is forbidden to touch the shawl, Stella endlessly longs for it because she is always cold. Rosa believes that the cold has gotten to Stella’s heart. Not caring about the consequences, famished and callous Stella steals Magda’s shawl for warmth. Although she only benefits briefly from the shawl, Stella’s desperate need for comfort results in the death of Magda.
The wartime lives of the soldiers who fought in the war were in a state of mind of mixed feelings. Happiness and devastating are two adjectives that can describe the soldier’s feelings in the war because at one second they can be happy that they succeeded on a mission, but on the other hand, it can be very devastating because one of their own soldiers could have been killed during the war. Aside from physical danger losing one of your own soldiers or having your family worry about you every day and night are some negatives and unpleasant parts about fighting in a war. For example, soldiers loved ones worried each day, and hoped that they would not get a knock on their door by someone who was going to tell them that their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers have died in the war.
Referring to the Battle of Stalingrad, one soldier wrote, “But what is death in reality here? Here they croak, starve to death, freeze to death-it's nothing but a biological fact like eating and drinking. They drop like flies; nobody cares and nobody buries them,” (Schneider 344) making sense of the severe conditions and its effect on German soldiers in Stalingrad.
The quality of life on the Relief camps were horrible .Majority of the men working on these camps were broke and tired farm boys. These men were treated like salves. They would receive 20 cents a day for manual labor. A few of their tasks would include: widening a trail, putting in a culvert, or cutting and stacking wood. These jobs were very physically demanding and stressful on the body. The camps were run by the Department of National Defence, so the workers were under “army law”. So, the people in charge could say or do whatever they wanted. An 18 year-old who experienced a relief camp said “{We} were treated like dirt”. The only semi-positive thing about these relief camps were that they kept the workers well
In the short story The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, we are introduced to three characters who are facing death surrounding them in a concentration camp. We are introduced to Rosa, Stella and Magda. Rosa is the mother in the story of Magda, Magda is a young baby whose odds of survival is not very good. We are also introduced to Stella, who is a demon in the mind of Rosa. Stella represents the life that Rosa once had, one where she did not have a child and did not have to put someone’s life before them self. Stella appears to have all the human features, have emotions and has human flaws, but she taunts Rosa while she is in the concentration camp. Stella also brings Rosa something that she could not do herself, the feeling of relief of a horrible
We have all seen or read about the political and social upheavals caused by war. Some may have even experienced it first-hand. Throughout history war has had negative psychological implications on those effected. However, there is no greater negative impact of war than the psychological and emotional turmoil that it causes individual soldiers.
War makes all its soldiers its victims. It strips them of their innocence; all had dreams for their future. Their future will become a lost life or a life full of memories that will continue to haunt them. The memories of killing, friends being killed, almosts, etc. War contains many horrors like these.