Totalitarianism In W. H. Auden's Poetry

"Hitler Youth:Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow." 2005. Studysync: Reading & Writing Companion. Sonoma, CA: BookheadEd Learning, LLC, 2015. 397-99. Print.

Recalling his devoted years to the Hitler Youth program, author Alfons Heck states “I have never once during the Hitler years thought of myself as anything but a decent, honorable young German, blessed with a glorious future” (206). This honesty conveyed by Heck elucidates the selfish ideals of those in the Hitler Youth, a theme apparent in the novel A Child of Hitler. Although Heck’s thoughts are self-conceited, they convey the opinions of those decieved by the Hitler Youth principles. As politically incorrect as these principles were, A Child of Hitler portrays them differently than other literature reporting on the subject. Through his descriptions of daily activities, Heck describes the pressure that children faced as Hitler Youth.

Here, Kimel is making fun of the Nazis who spend six days a week killing innocent people and then go to Church to hypocritically praise God as if they were God-fearing human beings. At the end of the poem, Kimel uses intertextuality as an evidence to prove that Hitler is an immoral person. “Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles!” (33), which means Germany, Germany above all, “was probably said by Hitler when justifying the slavery and murder of the Jews” (“Analysis”).

No one gets everything they want or sometimes anything. Punishment can go to ordinary people who have done nothing wrong with their life while the most terrible people are left alone. This was the case with a young boy named Elie Wiesel. He goes through his life tough and broken after His horrific moments in the concentration camp. He gives up on his own religion without the blink of an eye. The author shows you how this came to be by using tone, repetition, and irony to give a more in depth look and feel on how he gives up his religion so quickly. It shows how alone and lost all of us are in this world when pressured into a terrible environment. Everyone goes through pain, suffering, and agony in their life but, it's how you make those times is the key to it

Gruwell taught her class about the Holocaust, the genocide of Jews. While learning about this major event in class the students were able to see how another person’s hatred affected someone’s life. They saw that many of the victims did not survive and were killed simply because of their race. This drew a parallel for the students to see how their hatred and violence against each other was senseless. In the same way Hitler killed Jews because of their race, they were killing each other. From learning about the Holocaust the students were able to step outside from their own personal norms, and examine a situation from a new or different

Plath uses a hyperbole to drive the point of her father being the epitome of a Nazi by saying the swastika is so black it blocks out the sky. This extreme exaggeration helps drive across Plath’s point of her father being a complete Nazi. Near the end of the poem another allusion to Hitler is used. “I made a model of you, / a man in black with a Meinkampf look” (Plath 64-65). Here the father is described as a model, and an illusion to Hitler is made when she states he has a “Meinkampf look” with Mein Kampf being a book written by Hitler. Plath’s use of figurative language helps give a clear image of her relationship with her father and shows how she depicts him to be like a Nazi.

W. H. Auden's poem however is quite different. "Musee des Beaux Arts" is written in free verse, meaning that the poem is essentially "free" of meter, regular rhythm, or a rhyme scheme. Like the specific structural considerations of the sonnet form, the seeming lack of structure which free verse offers is purposely employed and works to illuminate the poem's meaning. In Auden's poem, the long irregular lines, subtly enforced by the irregular end rhyme pattern, create a casual, conversational air more prosaic than poetic, and a somewhat nonchalant tone which is reflective of the compassionate world illustrated in Brueghel's art. For example, in Auden's poem there is a subtle rhyme scheme that is throughout the poem. The poem's first line rhymes with the fourth but the fifth rhymes with the seventh. So although there is a rhyme scheme it is a non-traditional. This concept imitates the painting in the way that when looking at the painting you know that Icarus is drowning somewhere, but you do not see him until you really start concentrating on the images painted on the canvas. The casual, easy-going argument the tone suggests is ironic for the

This part of the novel resembles a point in Liesel’s character in which she was passionate about the things she was feeling - almost as if she was determined to do something about it. As this event occurred, Liesel was filled with anger about her parent’s disappearance. She had recently found out that Hitler had something to do with it, which pushed Liesel to the conclusion that Hitler was not a man to be celebrated. As her hatred for Nazi ideals grew, so did her bravery.

Max Vandenburg, who was a very supportive boy of Liesel, always helped her during her worst times and even her best times. Max had missed Liesel’s 12th birthday so he made her a little gift. He took a book called Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, but made it his own called The Standover Man. He gave this book to Liesel as it symbolizes how people have always stood over him in his life to help him just like Liesel has. “During that week, Max had cut out a collection of pages from Mein Kampf and painted over them in white. He then hung them up with pegs on some string, from one end of the basement to the other … Only then, on the paper that had bubbled and humped under the stress of drying paint, did he begin to write the story. It was done with a small black paintbrush” (Zusak 223). This quote reflects the power of words because Max is doing this for Liesel since they are good friends, and since it's her birthday. This comes to show that Max is about positive words towards his friends, but mainly Liesel.

The book 's importance is explained through Death where ‘“The books meaning 1. The last time she saw her brother. 2. The last time she saw her mother.” Despite Liesel being illiterate, the Gravedigger’s handbook holds significant meaning for the character. Liesel has an overwhelming feeling of loss of control and acts out in rebellion to steal the book that lay beside her brothers grave. By stealing the book, she has a reminder of her small family and it stops her feeling defeated by her ever changing life, which she has no control over. This idea is then reinforced with another action of the character. Liesel then finds out that Hitler was the cause of the suffering and loss of freedom of the people she loved and knew in her life.This second act of rebellion takes place while Liesel visits a Nazi book burning. Liesel soon understands that the Nazi’s burnt books to brainwash citizens of Germany(_____). As a result of this Lisel then understands the importance and power words have, causing her to again acts rebelliously in a protest. “And it was anger and dark hatred that had fueled her desire to steal it.” This passage from the novel shows the emotions of Liesel. As a character who is unable to express herself verbally, her actions speak for her. Liesel 's desire to understand words begins to grow, with her understanding that Nazis burn books in fear of what they may do to society.

The third stanza also starts to unearth the poem’s greater implications towards Nazi ideology with the line “puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing” (16). The “Darwinian” aspect is an outstanding piece of the third stanza because it applies a fairly exclusive human social concept to the killing of woodchucks. This is directly related to the Nazi’s ideology which had “evolved over the previous 80 years from the related notions of eugenics and Social Darwinism” (Erdos 6), but Maxine has not made this relation entirely explicit yet.

Later on, towards the end of the poem Plath makes reference to another set of Nazi actions and by doing so strengthening the image of death and destruction. In lines 73 thru 78, the speaker says:

He urged the people, “go into your churches, kneel before God, and implore his help for our brave army.”(25) This moment hinted at a more independent minded approach to traditional authority. When coupled together, the emotions of the crowds and the ability of groups like the Fatherland Party to find a footing in the political arena, gives reason to believe that the German people were ready to make a change that served their newfound interests. Fritzche explicitly makes this point, “the patriotism that Germans displayed was of their own making and suited to new conceptions of nation and citizenship which invited rather than discouraged public participation.” (66) At the conclusion of the war, millions of people were at a loss, and the Nazis stepped in to fill a void left by their opposition who had stoked the flames of nationalism but failed to capitalize on its apparent momentum. This included a strong message that laid blame for the German surrender at the feet of those in charge. Also, previous notions of class were turned upside down or, for the Nazis, right side up, making it possible for an illiberal, fascist community to become the norm. Simply put, “Basic elements of the Nazi message spoke to the political aspirations that burghers had held for more than ten years.” (192) Germans became Nazis by their own choosing, they were not forced to

The formative years of the 1900’s, suffered from communism, fascism, and capitalism. The author of the Brave New World, Mr. Aldous Huxley lived in a social order in which he had been exposed to all three of these systems. In the society of the Brave New World, which is set 600 years into the future, individuality is not condoned and the special motto “Community, Identity, Stability” frames the structure of the Totalitarian Government.

The extent people go to to prove their loyalty to authority, in this case the regime or the ideology is immense. Much like the green grocer who does little small things that don't mean anything at the moment but putting them all together it reinforces the system, its ideological domination at its best. Havel says “He does it because these things have been done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life in harmony with society”. Making one small move such as putting up the sign is not a big deal as one would say but when its thousands of things that end up replacing your individual actions instead, they become actions based on expectation by the regime and that is when