Autobiographical Literature of the Holocaust - 1641 Words

Jpz777 03/11/2013 Order # 2087935 Literature has always been mankinds greatest medium with which to express the spectrum of human emotion and experience, from the anguish of love lost to the joy of discovery, but the evocative power of the written word can also be used to capture the horrors that men are capable of inflicting on one another. During the Holocaust of World War II, during which the Nazi regime of Germany occupied much of continental Europe and murdered more than 6 million Jews in an industrialized genocide, the personal stories of countless victims were lost forever as entire family lines were obliterated on the order of Adolf Hitler and those pursuing his Final Solution. With a megalomaniacal dictator intent on rewriting the history of the Germanic people, while expunging all evidence of Jewish existence under his dominion, Hitlers Holocaust was designed to inflict not only the physical punishment of torture and death, but also the psychological torment of complete annihilation. In the decade following the fall of the Nazi party, with the world still struggling to comprehend the sheer scope of the atrocities committed behind the walls of Hitlers concentration camps, ghettos, and gas chambers, a pair of Holocaust survivors penned intensely moving autobiographical accounts of their persecution. Published in 1958, both Elie Wiesels Night and Primo Levis Survival in Auschwitz attempted to reveal the social significance of the Holocaust by recreatingShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Complete Maus By Art Spiegelman1454 Words   |  6 Pagesrewarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the originality of the book. A comic strip genre mixed with the memoir of the holocaust, from Art’s father’s first-hand experience, throws a whole different wave of emotions and feelings about the book’s content towards the reader. The use of a comic strip novel with this particular topic and mix of genres balanced the biographical, autobiographical and historical missions that he set to ach ieve when developing this novel perfectly. He is able to incorporate allRead MoreItalian Literature Paper. â€Å"It Is Not Possible To Sink Lower1366 Words   |  6 PagesItalian Literature Paper â€Å"It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so† (Levi 1238). This quote comes from Primo Levi’s story â€Å"On the Bottom†, where the audience gets a view of the vile and unspeakable event known today as the Holocaust. This event influenced Italian literature, taught people a great deal about the jewish culture, and showed people the true evil in history. To begin, the Jewish faith is one of the oldestRead MoreEliezer Wiesels Relationships1270 Words   |  6 Pagesbroken His promises and betrayed His people† (Estees). As a strong believer in God himself, Elie would not think that God would put these loving people through the Holocaust. No one deserves to be beaten, starved, and killed just for their different skin complexion, or their religious belief, or even their social class. During the Holocaust, â€Å"Faith is the cornerstone of a relationship with God; it is also the cornerstone of Eliezers relationships with others, which in turn give him a sense of his ownRead MoreSylvia Plaths Lady Lazarus1289 Words   |  6 PagesLazarus†. This work illustrates Plath’s use of autobiographical influence, theme, and style, especially her use of imagery. â€Å"Lady Lazarus† is an â€Å"extraordinarily bitter dramatic monologue in twenty-eight tercets† (Heaton). A female Lazarus that takes pleasure in rising from the dead several times is the speaker of this poem. The narrator begins by saying, â€Å"I have done it again,† in reference to dying. She then proceeds to compare herself to a Holocaust victim and says that she has nine lives, similarRead MoreThe Beginning Of Humanities Core862 Words   |  4 Pageswar. I noticed that other works of literature, plays, films, and the like similarly denied the audience closure or a way to identify with characters in order to force them to think, rather than feel, about what is being portrayed. For instance, Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, an autobiographical account of Kluger’s experience in Auschwitz, rejects the idea of sentimentality so readers will be able to critically think about the Holocaust. My research artifact, Francis FordRead MoreMy Final Words On War871 Words   |  4 Pageslesson. I noticed that other works of literature, plays, films, and the like similarly denied the audience closure or a way to identify with characters in order to force them to think about—rather than feel for—what is portrayed. For instance, Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2003), an autobiographical account of Kluger’s experience in Auschwitz, rejects the idea of sentimentality so readers will be able to critically think about the Holocaust. My research artifact, Francis FordRead MoreCultural Memory Of The Holocaust1785 Words   |  8 Pagesï » ¿Cultural Memory of the Holocaust Lillie Taylor LIB:316 Historical Context Literature (BPC1504A) Sherane Heron February 23, 2015 This paper will examine and analyze the turning points in the construction of Jewish memory and the identity in Israel as influenced by and based on the events of the Holocaust. This subject is also important for Poland as a country to come to grips with the last decade of the 20th century when it entered onto the path of social dialogue and bilateralRead More Comparing Feminist Poetry by Plath and Sexton Essay1201 Words   |  5 Pagescurrent of raw emotion common to all human, but especially female, understanding. In Plaths Daddy, written just before her death and published posthumously, the most readily accessible emotion is anger, and much of the poem is couched in autobiographical allusions. Plaths own father died of a gangrenous infection, caused by diabetes he refused to treat, when Plath was eight years old, and his death was the crucial event of her childhood (Baym 2743). Plath makes personal references to herRead MoreThe Denial of The Armenian Genocide Essay1442 Words   |  6 Pagesweakening leadership and economic support for the family. The second phrase of genocide began when they required young men to enlist to fight in the War, according to the article on â€Å"Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide- The Literature of Autobiographical Narrative†, Miller, Miller and Barker report that â€Å"all able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty-five were later disarmed and executed, their deaths explained under the pretext of war† (Pg. 2). This c reated economic hardshipRead MoreAwareness6564 Words   |  27 Pageshuman experience in general. It is indeed in the works of writers such as Marcel Proust or Jorge Luis Borges that the best exemplifications of the subjective experience of memory are to be found. However, from a strictly mnemonic point of view, literature provides more than a means of reflecting on memory: it is also the site of the rebirth and construction of individual and collective memories, which can then serve as a foundation for the writing of fictional works. Creative writing has a meiotic