Night Essay -- essays research papers fc

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Without a doubt, one of the darkest episodes in the history of mankind involved the systematic extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and gays by Nazi Germany. In order to get a good sense of the horror and despair that was felt by the interned, one simply needs to read the memoirs of Elie Wiesel in his â€Å"Night†, as translated from French by Stella Rodway and copyrighted by Bantam Books in 1960.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania. His parents ran a shop and cared for him and his three siblings, Hilda, Bea, and Tzipora. Early on, the Jewish community of Sighet payed little heed to the stories of what had happened to foreign Jews that were expelled. By the time Germans had entered Sighet, it was too late for the people to escape their fates. At first, they were made to give up all of their valuable possessions and move into makeshift ghettos. Next came deportation of the entire community to the Auschwitz internment camp. The way that the people were piled into cattle wagons was only a precurser of appalling events that were to come. The horror really dawned on Elie when he realized that the large smokestacks that he saw were from crematoriums that were set up to burn the bodies of the thousands upon thousands of Jews that were killed in the gas chamber. Elie paints a portrait of life in the camp, which included hours of back-breaking labor, fear o f hangings, and an overall theme throughout the book: starvation. The prisoners were given only black coffee in the morning, and soup and a crust of bread in the evening. The most terrifying aspect of the entire experience was the â€Å"selection†, the picking out of those that were to sick, old, or weak to be useful. These unfortunate souls were thrown into the fires. The one constant in Elie’s life was his father, who along with his son and all other prisoners, were later forced to evacuate to trains that would bring them to the Buchenwald internment camp deep in Germany, under the pressure of the Allied forces on the area. The final horrific scene in this book was how the interned, in mass, were forced to run full speed for hours on end, the people that lagged being shot on sight. The story culminated in the death of Elie’s father, and the eventual freedom of the Survivors of these death camps.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The way that Elie describe... ... day, Pope John Paul II apologized for the past sins of the church, but did not address the way that Pope Pious VII threw a deaf ear towards the Holocaust. What is more disturbing than the fact that their was not opposition to the Nazis by other European countries is the fact that something as horrible as this could happen again. In Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990’s, the â€Å"ethnic cleansing† of Muslims and Croats by Serbs led to the removal of 2.5 million people from cities and villages, mass murders, and the internment of men and boys in as many as 100 concentration camps. Although the situation did not escalate to the point of the Holocaust, it showed the ignorance of people as to past events.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To conclude, Elie Wiesel’s â€Å"Night† is a haunting and accurate account of the cruelty that man can inflict on man. The lessons learned from this account cannot be forgotten. If they are, then they are sure to be repeated. Works Cited â€Å"Ethnic Cleansing.† The Complete Reference Collection. 1998ed. CD-ROM. The   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Learning Company, Inc., 1998. â€Å"Holocaust.† The Complete Reference Collection. 1998ed. CD-ROM. The Learning

Kafka and the Dramatisation of the Guilty

Kafka†¦ draws the reader into the dramatization of the (guilty) failure to arrive, to communicate, to understand. And it is this movement which he describes again and again, not only on the level of rational discourse, but on a great many levels. -Heller Heller's statement is at best a rather enigmatic one: riddled with unanswered questions and uncertainties. The reader of Heller's statement would first ask himself how Kafka†¦ draws the reader into the dramatization, then would question the failure to arrive, to communicate, to understand: arrive, communicate, understand what? Thirdly, one asks oneself what is the movement he describes again and again: drawing the reader into the dramatization or the failure to arrive, communicate, understand. And lastly, one wonders what the â€Å"many levels† are that Kafka uses to communicate the rather ambiguous â€Å"movement†. The failure to arrive is a recurrent theme throughout the novel. Probably the best example of it is the failure to arrive at a judgement. K is on trial for the entirety of the novel, and never is judgement passed on him. He is waiting for the court to arrive at a judgement during the course of the novel, yet at the end he is only punished: the court never arrives at a judgement. This can be applied to most of the book: for instance K's failure to arrive at the first hearing on time and the failure of his case to arrive at the highest courts. It is if events are placed in suspense, their conclusion shimmering ever so faintly in the distance and the reader, like Tantalus, attempts to attain the unattainable. Failure to arrive may indicate that in â€Å"The Trial† the journey or process is more important than its conclusion; was the original German manuscript not actually called â€Å"Der Prozess†? However, whatever be the meaning of the failure to arrive, it is instrument al in creating tension as the conclusion continues to be elusive. The failure to arrive can possibly be linked with the failure to communicate in that if one is still in the process of thinking and has not yet arrived at a conclusion, one would find it difficult to accurately describe the thought process to another, hence the failure to communicate. I believe that the most accurate way to define the failure to communicate can be found in Brink's interpretation of the novel. Brink sees language in â€Å"The Trial† as being unable to communicate anything. Take, for example, the advocate's speeches. They are entirely superfluous: Huld turns endlessly around the point with out actually addressing it. Whether this is due to the inadequacy of language or to whether there actually is a point or not one is not sure, but there is clearly a failure to communicate. I believe that the concept of failure to communicate in The Trial is perhaps partly created by the language used in the novel, most of which convey only abstracted logical concepts. The lang uage used has no substance and therefore it is completely detached from reality: the syntax is correct but it makes no sense at all. Failure to understand also plays an extremely important rà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½le in the novel. It can be seen to follow on directly from the failure to communicate: if one person cannot communicate, the other cannot understand. Perhaps the most important instance of failure to understand is K's failure to understand the court system. He never seems to develop an adequate understanding of it from those who have or claim to have an understanding of it. They are unable to communicate their understanding to K, thus keeping K from arriving at an understanding or conclusion. This of course brings us back to the failure to arrive (at a conclusion) which in turns leads to the failure to communicate, and so on. According to Heller, Kafka dramatizes these failures by creating forms in which they can interact with each other, i.e. characters. It is into this dramatization that Kafka draws us by a rather clever usage of basic trait of human nature. Human nature is rather curious by definition, and Kafka uses this facet of human nature to entice the reader into a complete immersion in the world of â€Å"The Trial†. The failure to arrive at any conclusion or judgement is rather intriguing in that it creates a permanent sense of tension: a menace hanging over one's head in suspended animation and the goal almost visible in the distance. One does not know whether it will remain suspended, spring to life, or whether it is there at all. Indeed, one does not know if there really is a point or conclusion. This uncertainty, however, does not stop our pursuit of the glittering conclusion. The sight of it makes the state of uncertainty even more unbearable and the elusive conclusion yet more desir able. One is enticed into entering deeper into a tangle of uncertainties by this lure. The failure to communicate supports this. By using extremely ambiguous language, devoid of any substance and meaning, one is constantly held in a state of uncertainty. Bathed in this uncertainty, we feel the need to understand, to resolve the uncertainties. The failure to understand throughout the novel is echoed in the mind of the reader: if the narrator and/or the text know nothing and/or communicate nothing it is natural that the reader is maintained in a situation where he understands nothing and his curiosity is aroused. Eventually the reader to becomes part of the drama. His failures to understand, communicate and arrive echo those in the novel and reinforce them, plunging the reader yet deeper into the labyrinth without a center. This movement is a downward cycle in which confusion begets confusion, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into the text in a downward spiral. Heller declares that it is this movement which is described and communicated again and again throughout the text. It is indeed correct that this movement is repeated again and again: it is a chain reaction in which some begets more of the same and so on and so forth. However, one wonders how Kafka manages to communicate this to the reader. It is certainly almost impossible to explain it through the medium of language since it has been explained in the text that language is ambiguous and only confounds and obfuscates. Yet by it's own definition then, it is perfectly suited to describe this movement and feeling in the novel. Kafka uses the container, and not the content, in order to communicate the movement to his readers. Yet in a sense the content, or rather the lack of it, also helps to communicate the movement. One expects that a container contains. It is logical that and object should fulfill its definition. In ascribing to this logic, one falls even deeper into the text as one searches for meaning and substance. One becomes lost and confused wading through all the superfluous packaging searching for the content. But there is no center; there is no content. We echo K in his search for the high court, the nub of the court system. He fails because there is no nub; there is no high court.

William Blake s Inscription On The Young Chimney Sweepers

William Blake s Inscription on the Young Chimney Sweepers By: Kyle Fitch Prof. Joseph McNally Engl. 3312 B April 20, 2015 A key point in the history of mankind was the Industrial Revolution. It was also a difficult time in history in terms of suffering, especially for the lower class that had to work twice as hard as the upper class for minimum wage. A young poet by the name of William Blake became livid and motivated in the late eighteenth century by the coldhearted usage of young boys for chimney sweeping. As a result, he created a demonstration in the arrangement of humble poetry Deeper knowledge of Blake will reveal no darkly buried meaning, only a deeper sense in the meaning obvious to all (Schulz, Max F, 7)†. This is exactly the case in which Blake calls them The Chimney Sweepers Blake uses practicality, rather than in-depth imagery, to portray the ruthless conditions of the Industrial Revolution. Blake was encouraged to compose a poem about these young children and their brutal lives for the public. The public was not commonly made aware of the abuse but it was acknowledged that the young children were being mistreated through their short-lived years. Yet, history has lost sight of the disgusting conditions the young boys encountered every day. For that reason, understanding with such specifics does help the person who reads Blake’s poem to see more clearly of Blake s accusation towards humanity for allowing kids to be exposed to practically unlivableShow MoreRelatedThe Unification Of Innocence And Experience1933 Words   |  8 PagesThe Unification of Innocence and Experience Many peer-reviewed sources believe it is â€Å"essential† to understand the historical contexts of William Blake’s lifetime in order to accurately interpret Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Blake 23). I present opposing questions to this theory: (1) why is it necessary to try and adopt a perceptional adaptation of Blake’s historical perspective in order to comprehend and interpret his work; (3) is Songs of Innocence and of Experience a timeless work of