Chattahoochee River
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Chapter 3 Undescribable
For this chapter I would like to call attention to Elie's intentional style of writing. At the end of Chapter 3 some guards, while having the Jews walk or work or something, mess around with some German girls. They laugh, kiss, tickle, and tease them, obviously having a good time flirting with the young women. When reading this, I tried to imagine Elie's unimaginable torment at seeing his captors leisurely enjoy the presence of women. While the guards are at ease casually having fun with these women, he's been forced by these guards to be separated from his family, watch his fellow Jews die, be treated inhumanely, and be forced to work against his will. The extreme injustice is unable to be captured in words; which is why I notice Elie said nothing about this cruel injustice. He simply said what happened, but offered no further commentary. Perhaps he understood he could not explain his emotion behind what he saw simply because he could not capture the full extent of what he felt through words, so he left it obvious enough for the readers to understand. By saying something he would've limited the definition of how he felt to what he said, and that definition would've probably not been an adequate reflection of his emotions. In addition, by saying what he felt, it would've isolated the rest of his fellow Jews who were also watching- I'm sure they felt the very same injustice Elie felt. (Thanks to my table group for helping me come up with this.)
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I find your point about tone extremely interesting, Loren, and Loren's table. I hadn't thought of tone in that way. As much as it can help convey certain feelings, it can also be quite limiting. I feel that the decision to simply state the event was a good idea because it left the event and its' impact open to interpretation, which would force people to really stop and think about what happened.
ReplyDeleteI love this post. That is so true how by putting less he was able to say more by forcing the reader to stop and think about it. I had seen this incident as interesting. I more imagined Elie's surprise at seeing his tortures as human. I think it would make me hate them more because it shows that they were capable of being human and civil they just considered the Jews below them. Their ability to compartmentalize their humanity (though don't we all do this to some degree? We all have a party of "thems" we can't see the other side of don't we?) would make their gross inhumanity seem a greater offense in my mind.
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