CW8 Readig Journal

Brian Spenser

Reading Journal 8

The poem in the beginning served not only to set the tone for the piece as one that deals with the very serious subject of estrangement and dehumanization, but also to provide a “warning” to readers who fail to take it seriously. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I’d quote the old maxim. “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” The narrator in the text seems to have little direction in his life. The author leaves it open for the reader to think that, in other circumstances or in other times, this young man would have had a great chance in life. There is no hypothesizing, though. I think it was intentional that the narrator didn’t talk about what he may have done, were it not for the war. It seems to lend the piece an air of immediacy, or perhaps it suggests the rigid dehumanization of the death camps. There is no speculation, no hope in places like those. Another aspect of the narrator was that he seemed to be something of an innocent. The passage, “How could he hit a man without anger?” Summed up well the complete and utter conceptual disconnect between him, his mindset, and that of the fascists or Nazis. Some particularly powerful passages for me were, before the deportation, when the mothers hung their children’s laundry on the barbed wire of the fence that kept them caged. The visual nature of this passage forced me to think about the idea portrayed here, the humanity coming through though the people are being treated as animals. Not only did it impress this upon me, but also it made the point that there was still room for love in the climate of hate; a mother could still love her son though, by the hatred of others, they would both be dead the next day. Another powerful passage was, near the end, where the old Jews in the camp laugh at the new arrivals when they ask how long they would be there for. This poignantly shows, not tells, the hopelessness of the situation.