Chattahoochee River
Friday, January 16, 2015
Ch. 2 - "Fight Fire with Fire, Ending is Near"
I found the whole situation with Mrs. Schachter to be quite interesting. Her complaining at first is quite understandable considering she has been separated from her husband, however it is her later cries that are the most interesting. When Mrs. Schachter is screaming about fire, most people just write it off as her being crazy, and she may have been. However, the other people in the train car later realized that she was referring to the furnaces at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as indicated by the smokestacks they would later see. It is possible that Mrs. Schachter had been having visions, but it could also have just been a way for Wiesel to foreshadow the upcoming horror that they would experience at the camp.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I found this interesting too Nahel. I thought that this may have been foreshadowing, and only used as a literary device, or Mrs. Schächter may have actually known what was coming next. Either way, it is very interesting how Wiesel included her situation in the book.
ReplyDeleteI know this is going to sound weird but after our unit about truth and pondering whether or not people tell the full truth in stories or add details as effect I am convinced that Elie Wiesel may have added the detail of the woman screaming about a fire. I do believe however that there was probably many people on the train over taken by sadness of lost family members who were crying and wailing but I believe that the author just used the specific mentioning of fire for foreshadowing. I believe he wanted to draw specific attention to the fact that as she was screaming everyone thought she was crazy because no one knew what their fate would be. They didn't realize what was actually happening until they saw it with their own eyes. Notice how they also called Moishe crazy because they all believed it to be speculation.
ReplyDeleteI agree Nahel I think when she talked about the fire she was foreshadowing what would happen to them. I don't believe she was crazy at all actually and believe she was the most sane person because she did not run away from reality like everyone else.
ReplyDeleteI would like to believe that this is just Wiesel trying to had some literary elements to his book, especially since it was a main focus of the chapter with lots of repetition. But it would definitely be interesting of this was a real account of what happened.
ReplyDelete