Essay about The Function of the Shawl in Ozick's The Shawl

The major theme of the book is shown through the bonds of friendship and how in the most of unlikely circumstances friendship can survive and exist between people possessing an extensive and most restrictive division. A second theme is the evil and the intolerance which existed around these times of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, as seen by the Germans having the Jews in the concentration camp. And the third theme is the curiosity and innocence of Bruno, Shmuel and

In the short story “Marigolds”, the author, Eugenia Collier, uses several key events throughout the short story to represent the unseen cage that the main character, Lizabeth, is trapped in, and ultimately breaks. The story is set in a shanty town, likely taking place during the Great Depression. Throughout the story, Lizabeth goes through a difficult stage in life, a stage in which she is in conflict about whether she wants to be a carefree, innocent child, or an educated, compassionate adult. The climax of the story, when Lizabeth tears and rips up Miss Lottie’s marigolds, is such an emotional moment for Lizabeth that she finally completes her transition to adulthood, understands her endless cycle of poverty, and breaks the final bar of the cage.

Cynthia Ozick’s story “The Shawl” is told in a way were the readers feel hopelessness and despair. The characters are put in a situation so hopeless there’s no way that they can escape. This text at first begins with confusion, however as you read more you start to put the pieces to gether like a puzzle. Magda the only character who thrives in the story, and still she becomes a victim of the harsh environment around her. At it’s core this text tells of how you can be thrown in an concentration camp, treated as a lower human being, just because your not the perfect white color, and starved to near death, but no amount of oppression could drain the humanity you have inside. Although Stella is a counter to this because she is bitter, and envious

The shawl symbolizes the necessity for illusion as defense against struggle in uncomfortable circumstances. In “The Shawl”, Ozick highlights the process in which said illusion can easily shift into a dehumanizing delusion. The characters share their perception of the “magic shawl” (517) as a source of hope and comfort. For Magda, it makes her “dumb” (518) to the reality she lives in. Although the infant’s use of the shawl is understandable, Stella and Rosa’s belief in it is a sign of desperation, regression, and the breakdown of rationality in the face of extreme deprivation and loss. Stella suffers inadequate mothering and as a result desires the shawls powers to revert to infancy as an escape from responsibility. For Rosa, the shawl acts as an illusionary umbilical cord between her child. Once cut, she is stripped of her motherhood and is forced into a delusionary sense of helplessness. In dire

In this scene from Night, Elie Wiesel and his inmates are rushed out of their barracks at 5 A.M, forced to strip, and ordered run, naked and cold. Elie unveils that enslavement strips one of their personal identity leading to dehumanization. Wiesel observes “Mountains of prison garb” in the concentration camp. The use of hyperbole, exaggerating the amount of prison garb, emphasizes the high density of individuals in the camp. They are forced to wear the same uniform clothing, illustrating the destruction of individuality. The use of the word “prison” shows the birth of subjection. Wiesel also uses syntax to demonstrate the conformity of the camp, recalling the daily routine “Disinfection. Everybody soaked in it. Then came a hot shower. All

Lamed Shapiro’s “The Cross” tells the story, in vivid and disturbing detail, of a Russian Jewish man who is attacked in a pogrom, alongside his estranged mother, and is branded on the forehead with a cross by his attacker. Blume Lempel’s “Images on a Blank Canvas” tells another story, in equally vivid and disturbing detail, of a woman mourning the death of her friend, a prostitute who committed suicide. In these two stories, there is one striking similarity: The survivor is portrayed by the non-survivor. In “The Cross,” the Russian Jew is depicted by his mother as the brutally murdered non-survivor of a pogrom. In “Images on a Blank Canvas,” Blume Lempel, the survivor, is depicted by her fallen friend Zosye. Through the depictions of survivors by non-survivors, Shapiro and Lempel are able to unpack the trauma stemming from a pogrom and a suicide and its effects on the survivors.

The central idea of this book is a little girl and her struggle in concentration camps the author shows this by “ tomorrow is deportation”( Leitner 3) . This happened on May 28, 1944 where she started her journey in the camps. She explains her feelings and fairs of them too and how she's not ready to leave this place called home because she was living in hungary and she ends up having to move away. Something else that is showing Isabella’s struggle is ”Every since childhood,I remember them with terror in my heart.” (Isabella Leitner 5). In this quote she is talking about the people that heard them like cattle and stuff. This was also the people that would kill them and make them do horrible things.These were the people that didn't make them feel like people. “75 to a car... no toilets... no doctors ... no medication”( Leitner 7) Isabella is talking about how they were moved place to place in these little cattle cars and how horrible the conditions normally where. Imagine being shoved in

Life is a precious thing, and it is so precious that some people will undergo severe anguish to hold on to it. During the 1930’s and 1940’s in Germany, people of the Jewish religion were diabolically oppressed and slaughtered, just for their beliefs. Some Jews went to extreme measures to evade capture by the German law enforcement, hoping to hold on to life. Krystyna Chiger was only a small child when her family, along with a group of other desperate Jews, descended into the malignant sewers to avoid the Germans. After living in the abysmal sewers for fourteen months, her group emerged, and when she became an adult, she authored a novel about her time in the sewer. When analyzing the literary elements utilized in her novel, The Girl in the Green Sweater, one can determine how tone and mood, point of view, and conflict convey the message of struggle and survival that was experienced during the Holocaust, and how they help the reader to understand and relate.

The inmates eat soup while in the camp. When the time comes for them to get their bowls filled, Levi professes they “have an animal hurry” to consume their food (Survival 69). This metaphor suggests the men’s animalistic behavior due to their severe thirst and hunger. The concept of dehumanization carried out by the Schutzstaffel primarily targets the prisoners‘ “identity” and “community” (“Dehumanization”). Each man’s struggle to survive in Auschwitz depends on their principal focus of themselves. They can “no longer elicit compassion or other moral responses”, every man endures on his own, and they cannot think of others. Ironically, waiting around to pass time satisfies the inmates; “ [they] are always happy to wait” (Survival 104). Levi rationalizes their content when Alex tells them to wait and says they have “the complete obtuse inertia of spiders in old webs” (Survival 104). He compares his Kommando to spiders, as they sit lifelessly, trapped in an abandoned labyrinth. The action of waiting brings the men solace, for once, as “time moves smoothly” and they have no duties to complete (Survival 104).

The spine chilling experiences Jewish individuals faced during the holocaust are conveyed well in the short story “The Shawl” as the author, Cynthia Ozick illustrates the horrific battle of motherhood and strife for survival they faced. Rosa, Ozick’s main character experiences an internal battle of nurturing her infant Magda and following her motherly instincts or fighting for her own survival. Magda another crucial character grips onto the ropes of life through the threads of the shawl but when she loses her shawl she loses her life showing the harsh realities of the concentration camps. Through the use of symbolism and carefully orchestrated imagery Ozick brings to life the unspeakable struggles the Jewish faced to survive in the midst

In “The Shawl”, Cynthia Ozick uses vivid details throughout the story to engage the reader. The story portrays the hard times Jews had during the Holocaust in a concentration camp consisting of three main characters: Rosa, Stella, and Magda who are trying to survive the horror of Nazism through a magical shawl. Rosa is the mother of Magda, a fifteen month baby and the aunt of Stella, a fourteen year old girl. The shawl is the only thing keeping them alive throughout the story and at the end it leads them to their death. The author’s use of symbolism is very significant to the story. Cynthia Ozick use of symbolism helps the reader visualize the setting by using symbols to convey different meanings and understand how these symbols characterize the experience of the holocaust survivors.

She starts to push away from him and he releases her. Slowly she walks into the minute apartment. It never seemed that small to her until her sister arrived, bringing back memories of belle Reve, and it's white columns and rolling acres, but this modest apartment is no Belle Reve, and the French Quarter is lacking in rolling acres. The room is dark, and she can only be seen under the dingy light of the naked bulb. The shadows it casts only highlight Blanche's absence in the now quiet apartment. Directly under the light, Stella turns to face

In the period of 1942-1945 eight jewish people had gone into hiding due to the Holocaust. There was nearly 11 million people that died during the holocaust, and 6 million of them were jews. But the eight people struggling to survive in the most brutal conditions. During the two year period the characters moods change and relationships change throughout the unsparing period.

While all of the residents in the nearby village know Magda is a gypsy, they keep it quiet, because the gypsies, like the Jews, are persecuted by the Germans. She turns out to be a good witch, unlike the earlier fairy tale. That she was taken away after helping the children to flee may be evidence that life, for an ageing person, must have taken on a different importance at that time than it might in other times. Again this may be a reminder that during the holocaust older people, who were considered to be of less use overall, and were automatically annihilated. This book touches on the fact that the more useful a person was the greater their chances of survival.

Since Gertrude had nothing else to do but fret, she decided she was going to try and help with the other orphaned children. She’d keep them company when they cried over the loss of their parents and siblings, and she’d distract them to keep their minds off the horrific tragedy. Then one day, she met a little girl named Rosaline. Rosaline was about five or six, though nobody knew for sure. They actually didn’t even know her actual name. The tenement had given her the name so that the adults could keep track of her, because it was too hard to refer to her as the “orphaned little girl”. She wouldn’t speak, and she stared blankly at a wall for most of the day. Gertrude decided to spark a conversation with the girl and try to