The Painted Bird By Jerzy Kosinski

“The War Against The Jews” by Lucy Dawidowicz explores a very dark time in history and interprets it from her view. Through the use of other novels, she concurs and agrees to form her opinion. This essay will explore who Dawidowicz is, why she wrote the book, what the book is about, what other authors have explored with the same topic, and how I feel about the topic she wrote about. All in all, much research will be presented throughout the essay. In the end you will see how strongly I feel about the topic I chose. I believe that although Hitler terrorized the Jews, they continued to be stronger than ever, and tried to keep up their society.

Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer is a very influential novel in the military. In fact, it is required reading material for all 1st Lieutenants in the Marine Corps as well as in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Many Army leaders have read the book and often discuss it among themselves in social situations. Although a fiction read, many leaders extrapolate the use of mission command as well as the leaderships attributes. In this analysis I will be comparing a single event in the novel to the Army’s leadership principles as well as Mission Command. I will then provide a personal reflection and conclude.

The climax of the story has just occurred, as the child death has taken place. The Spanish belief that the moon is a bad omen has remained true with the little boy‘s eyes closed, signifying his death. The gypsies return and the diction used to describe them emphasizes their mystery and flow. “How the night bird sings” (29) implies the bird is singing a song to mourn the death of the child. It then says “across the sky moves

“The Route of the Crows” by Cemil Kavukcu is a gothic, short story full of symbolism and foreshadowing. “Though the action takes place in and around a house, the house sometimes seems abandoned and sometimes occupied” (“Elements of the Gothic Novel”). The work is pervaded by a “threatening feeling, a fear enhanced by the unknown, and the plot is built around a mystery of an inexplicable event” (“Elements of the Gothic Novel”). Although the narrator and Ziynet are in a constant state of paranoia and assumption, these assertions pave the way to an undeniable fate alluded by the sight of crows.

Cruelty surrounds the world constantly, and is used frequently in works of literature to reveal certain things about the theme. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, acts of cruelty are used to express the theme and enhance its message. One of the largest themes revealed by these acts is “man’s inhumanity to man,” which includes mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis, the common people, and other Jews. Watching the large amounts of violence, abuse, and discrimination that occur in this memoir show us the horrors of the Holocaust and how it transformed the men and women who it experienced it, as well as those who caused it.

‘The Action in the Ghetto’ is a poem based on the perspective of a holocaust survivor. Kimel re-tells the horrors that he had survived during the holocaust. Kimel uses various literary techniques to create a visual for the audience to ‘see’ his experience. Kimel describes the visual of ‘the hunt’ as “the creation of hell.” He uses this metaphor to describe the soldiers and their true nature. Kimel then goes on describing the Nazi soldiers as “enjoying the hunt.” Kimel’s perception of the Nazi soldiers was that they found the hunt to be fun which provides insight into the

Larson, Erik. In the garden of beasts: love, terror, and an American family in Hitlers Berlin. 375 pages. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2011.

Nazi troops marched through the countryside of Germany, breaking into Jewish communities and businesses, capturing and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews, all because the current leader of Germany at the time, Adolf Hitler, wanted the Jews working for him or dead. These acts of violence are the stage for the book Night, where a boy recounts his life of imprisonment and death-defying acts of courage, and Hitler Youth, a factual account of the horrors of 1930’s Germany. During these difficult times, Hitler and all of his followers used the punishments put on them after World War Two as an excuse to disobey the laws set on them and began to raise and incredibly powerful military made up of men and women, young and old, and did whatever

Some believe that birds help express spiritual freedom and psychological liberation with the different colors of birds that are associated with various meanings; specifically the yellow bird means you should keep your guard up. In the novel, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, John Bartle becomes guarded and isolated because of his internal battles created by his experiences from war. Bartle struggles with the lack of control he has over the events that happen to him in during his time in the military. He fights with his helplessness when he tries to transition to his lifestyle at home. He also cannot control how he changes as a person. When we think of war we think of the physical damage we see on the exterior but what we cannot see is the psychological damage in the interior of a person.

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor” (Thomas Jefferson). In the graphic novels Maus I: A Survivors Tale & Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman, he uses animal imagery to portray the predator-prey relationship that the Nazi regime shared with the Jewish population. Based on the alienation of the Jewish “race” albeit “not human” and the superiority that the rest of the populations begin to feel, these depictions of races, countries, and ethnicities as animals is both appropriate and effective to illustrate the various groups during the Holocaust. This resembles the Nazi belief that certain populations have a conventional character and will retain their inborn predator or prey status by characterizing the Jewish as Mice and the Nazis as Cats.

The eighteenth century marked a period of renewal within Italy. This transition saw the acceptance of new philosophies that were rampant throughout most of Europe (Yawney 2). The Age of Enlightenment, as it has come to be known, brought upon changes within the realms of economic, social, and religious affairs. However, amidst any form of radical change come those who do not attest to it. In his fable, The Green Bird, Venetian dramatist Carlo Gozzi incorporates subject matter that attacks not only the realism seen in Carlo Goldoni’s theatre but also the thought of modern Enlightenment ideology.

One past experience determines an entire future. In “Hands”, Sherwood Anderson describes Wing Biddelbaum as a nervous, conservative, reclusive man with a disturbing past. Wing has been forced into hiding the things that define him the most, his hands. Throughout the short story, Anderson takes the reader for a journey through Wing’s life leading to a development of empathy for the main character. Overall, Anderson’s extensive characterization of Wing makes him a easily relatable character and allows a connection to form between him and the reader.

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.

The holocaust was a bleak and unrecoverable part of the history of the twentieth century that will always be remembered. Millions died for no reason except for one man’s madness. Although many people know why this war happened many don’t know when and what events lead up to this: the way Hitler came into power, or when the first concentration camp was established, and what city it was in, why Jews were hated so much by Hitler, and why the rest of the country also hated them as well as, and what the chronology of the Holocaust. These are some of the things I will explain in my paper.

The texts ‘The Last Night’ by Sebastian Faulks and ‘Refugee Blues’ by W.H. Auden are similar in a sense that they both describes the suffering and alienation of the Jews at the time of World War Two. However, they are not identical as ‘The Last Night’ is an extract from Sebastian Faulk’s book describing the suffering of the French Jew 's journey before they were deported to a concentration camp whereas ‘Refugee Blues’ is a poem about the hardships of the refugees that fled from Germany before the Holocaust to Britain.