Chattahoochee River
Friday, January 16, 2015
CH 3 - Scenery
One thing that I noticed in this chapter as well as the first one was the way Wiesel describes the scenery as things are happening. When he talks about going to the camp and being treated so poorly, I imagine everything very dull and grey but then he mentions the bright sky and how nice the sunset is. This shocked me at first because I didn't think that there would be anything nice in a situation like this but I think he may have added these details to make a point. His point being that they were in this horrendous place but no one was coming to their rescue and life everywhere else was continuing as it normally would have. Life in the camp was awful but the weather was nice, just as it would have been if there wasn't a concentration camp.
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Marisa, I also thought it was interesting how Elie chose to juxtapose the beautiful scenery with their devastating predicament because it does in fact demonstrate how the world appeared to remain oblivious to the plight of the prisoners in the concentration camps as if they weren't actually occurring.
ReplyDeleteI also think that Elie included the scenery however, to make the account more realistic and relatable to the reader. Thankfully, none of us have endured something as terrible as a concentration camp, so even as we empathize with Elie and the other Jews, we fail to truly understand the full gruesomeness since we've never experienced it.
This actually reminds me of something that Tim O'Brien said in The Things They Carried about the truth behind a war story. Some things are added and others are taken away to truly get at the root of the story and make the reader fully understand. I think that's what Elie was doing here by adding the description of the sky. He was showing us how paradoxical his situation in the camps was, and how confused yet awestruck he was that such a terrible fate could be in the midst of such a beautiful sky.
I found it strange as well that he mentioned the scenery to be beautiful, despite being in a concentration camp. I think he did this to demonstrate that world is oblivious to what's happening. Eventhough it's a nice sunny day for everyone else, it is a dark gloomy one for the Jews.
ReplyDeleteUntil I read your post I was totally obilvious to the detail. I as well pictured this gloomy and grey scene because how could you even in your own imagination put detail or notice about the day. But it is kind of funny how even though they are going through this horrible situation, the author adds this detail of the beautiful day. It blows my mind how he could pick up on this aspect of the day, because I know that if I were going through these circumstances my mind would be focused on what's happening and what's going to happen.
ReplyDeleteI didn't notice this detail in the chapter until you mentioned it Marisa. Now that I look back at it, I believe Weisel used the bright sky as a symbol to show that life for others was going on and no one knew about what was going on with the Jews. Also he may have used it as a way to show that there was no sign of people coming to their rescue.
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