"Poor woman"... The fact that the Jews in the cattle car with Mrs. Schächter can find it in themselves to still feel bad for someone else after what has happened to them so far is beyond me. The Jews have been uprooted from not only their homes, but from their lives as a whole, and they still have yet to find out of all the torment they will soon receive. However, they set it all side and find it in themselves to sympathize for this woman who is going through the same circumstances. Instead of feeling bad for themselves for everything they have lost and wondering about what is to come, the Jews put their feelings aside and feel bad for Mrs. Schächter.
You bring up an interesting point, but I feel like they didn't really sympathize with the woman. They beat her until she fell silent which only makes me think that they did not care about her, they only cared about keeping the people quiet and maintaining a sense of stability. This woman was just causing them a major problem and they believed the only explanation was that she had gone mad.
ReplyDeleteI felt they might have first shown her sympathy, but towards the end of the chapter they were very cruel towards her. Erik, what do you think happened for them to change their approach towards Mrs. Schacter? Another thing that caught me about this chapter was thinking about how this situation impacted the children who were watching it unfold. It was probably shocking to see adults physically assaulting the woman.
ReplyDeleteI felt that they decided to put her out just so that they could put her out of her misery. Sure it was pretty violent but I took it as the people in the same car as her were only doing her a favor. And in response to the children, I feel the adults were doing them a favor by putting her out so they would not be even more scared.
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