Damaged Beyond Repair

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Cynthia Ozick’s, “The Shawl”, manages to evoke the cold horror in the heart of the Holocaust and the madness that essentially embodies those who have gone through such a tragic episode.  The narrator thoughtfully introduces the experience of adversity in different ways that will determine the future of three girls and the life they will live, or not.  Rosa, a mother, does everything in her power to protect her daughter, Magda.  A special shawl, viewed to possess magical qualities, is the very purpose of living.  It is the gateway to freedom, nurture, and survival.  The shawl functions symbolically in many ways and poses as different sources of life.  For Magda, the shawl represents shelter, food, and warmth, which are all necessities one would need to survive.  For Rosa, it represents possession, obsession, and her past.  Rosa’s niece, Stella, views the shawl as a way to escape the cold.  Ironically, she is viewed as “the coldness of Hell” (Ozrick 1) after taking the magical shawl that everyone seems to want control over.  Not having the same involvement of being a mother, Stella has a difficult time understanding Rosa’s stubbornness of clinging to the past.  After losing Magda, Rosa loses everything.  It is the shawl that enables her to hold on to her lost possessions.  Stella and Mr. Persky, a stranger who begins to break Rosa’s barriers, have a different view on the life that she is to live.

While Rosa remains broken and angry, Stella is able to move on and live her life.  Rosa’s madness and insane behavior makes perfect sense, but not to the ones around her, for “[her] Warsaw, isn’t [their] Warsaw” (19).  Readers may view Rosa to be crazy, insane, and downright mad!  She does not want to let go of the life she once lived.  It is her stubbornness that forces the people around her to become annoyed.  Rosa fails to see the support she does have and rather dwells in loneliness.  Her conversation with Mr. Persky demonstrates just that:

“I’ll walk you.”

“No, no, sometimes a person feels to be alone.”

“If you’re alone too much…you think too much.”

“Without a life…a person lives where they can.  If all they got is thoughts,
that's where they live."

“You ain’t got a life?”

“Thieves took it.” (27-28)

Rosa is comfortable being alone, for it is all she has known since coming to America.  She wants to “live in her thoughts” because she is able to access Magda by writing letters, ritualizing with the shawl, and reliving the memories.

By moving on from an event and merely forgetting the memories can seem cold, insensitive, and in Rosa’s case: vulgar.  She refers to Stella as “the Angel of Death” (15) and Mr. Pensky a thief, which parallels those who took her life.  I believe this to be a defense mechanism.  Rosa is creating a barrier and is reliving “the life before, the life during…” in her “life after”, as if creating her own concentration around her.  For what she has gone through, her insane behavior makes all the sense.  I can empathize with Rosa, for I too have lost a loved one.  Coping is very difficult, but I know that my dad would want me to live my life to the fullest and not hold back.  The memories will always be there to cherish.  Stella and Mr. Persky are indeed living their lives, and Rosa is living hers just the way she pleases.

Breaking Down "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

Cassandra McCulley

Dr. Sharon Oster

March 25, 2012

Breaking Down “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath

            After reading Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Daddy” for the first time, I really didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure if the narrator was Sylvia herself, I wasn’t sure if the father being described was indeed a Nazi, and I had very little knowledge about Sylvia Plath’s background to begin with.

            Throughout the entire poem Plath, the narrator, describes things that she has been feeling her entire life. We know this because on line three she clearly states, “For thirty years…” (3). So now that she is grown and writing this poem, we realize she is reflecting on her childhood. Her style of writing seems almost childish, somewhat similar to the old nursery rhyme, “There was an old woman that lived in a shoe…” This connection suggests to me, as a reader, that she is unable to let go of her past. She also uses other childish words and language such as the word “daddy”, also showing that she is unable to let go of the things that happened to her as a child.

            We later realize that her father died when she was quite young. Plath writes, “Daddy, I have had to kill you./ You died before I had time—,” (6-7). When I read this line I had to think it over a few times. By saying that she had to kill her father, I translated that to she had to forget him, she had to kill her memories of him. When she said he died before she had time, I wonder what she meant. What wasn’t she able to do before he died? This is answered later in the poem.

            Continuing on in the poem, we realize that communication was a big problem for Plath. In lines 24 through 30 she writes, “I never could talk to you./ The tongue stuck in my jaw./ It stuck in a barb wire snare./ Ich, ich, ich, ich,/ I cold hardly speak./ I though every German was you./ And the language obscene.” (24-30). Here we begin to realize that Plath was unable to communicate with her father. She was so scared that she could hardly speak. We also begin to see Plath’s references to the Holocaust. She continues to compare her father to a Nazi, and herself to a Jew. She was a prisoner, helpless, unwanted, a weak oppressed victim of her father.

            Then Plath began to talk about her own brushes with death. “I was ten when they buried you./ At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you.” (57-60). She is describing her own three attempts at suicide here in such a unique way. I didn’t know she had attempted to suicide, although I did know she eventually succeeded in doing so. This was an interesting way of sneakily incorporating her death experiences.

            Plath’s writing continued to stump me. “And I said I do, I do./ So daddy, I’m finally through./ The black telephone’s off at the root,/ The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man I’ve killed two--/ The vampire who said he was you/ And drank my blood for a year,/ Seven years, if you want to know.” (67-74). It took me quite some time to realize that she indeed married a man just like her father, who like a vampire, sucked the life out of her. But like her father, she left her husband, and is trying to get rid of all memory of him. I love the way Plath wrote about her husband in this poem. I love the parallels she creates between her husband and her father, and how hard she is trying to convey the message that she wants to be free of them and the memory of them.

            Although the poem clearly says that Plath is through, she never can be truly through because this poem will live on forever since the moment she put it down on paper. I understand why Plath received so much criticism from people during the time period the poem was written because World War II and the Holocaust were fresh subjects and she was deemed somewhat disrespectful because she compared her father and childhood to the Holocaust. But I think it really was beautiful writing. She was trying to connect to people, and make the poem so dramatic in the sense that people would be able to understand and somewhat relate. Although it seems controversial, I think this is an overall beautiful piece and is very intricately written.

Emergence of Man

            Frederick Douglass narrative is aptly summed up in a single quote: “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” (Douglass 107). The dual, negative effects of slavery upon both master and servant is a major subject in Douglass’ A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.   However, the importance of religion alongside running motifs of humanization and dehumanization of people based on their actions are actually set up an interesting set of parallels within the story however: the more learned Douglass becomes and the closer he comes to achieving his desired freedom, the more the corrupting effects of slavery upon the master are made known to the reader.  Simply put, the more Douglass grows closer to becoming a man, his masters seem to become increasingly less monstrous.

            The further entrenched Douglass becomes in the slavery the more inhuman the owners appear to become.  Initially, Douglass is faced with the cruelties of Captain Anthony and is exposed to the dreadful natures of slavery.  The key moment occurs when Douglass witnesses the whipping of his Aunt Hester at the hands of Anthony, a horrid occurrence that is viscerally described by Douglass; and terms like “gory” “iron” and even the very tone of the passage serve as violent imagery for Anthony’s vile actions.  And while Douglass observes that Captain Anthony has a sick enjoyment of whipping slaves, he notes that Anthony’s heart had been “hardened by a long life of slaveholding” (51).  Douglass’ metaphor establishes the first of many instances in which good men and women are made cruel and those already wicked are made even more so.

            The first step into breaking away from the notion of slavery is the attaining of knowledge and the ability to think freely.  When Douglass first begins to learn to read under the tutelage of Mrs. Auld, his lessons mark the first step away from enslavement. During this brief period in which Douglass pulls away from slavery his mistress is, for the most part, kindhearted and eager to help the young boy learn.  However, as Douglass observes: “the fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work.”  Douglass’ metaphor proves to be accurate foreshadowing of his friendship with Sophia Auld, as the mistress adopts the notions and ideals of her husband regarding teaching slaves.  Eventually, Mrs. Auld developed a penchant for restricting Douglass’ access to reading material, although this did very little to stop the now curious slave.  During this brief timeframe in which Douglass learned to read, Sophia Auld gradually learned the ways of slavery, another reinforcement of this interesting parallel.

            Ownership of Douglass is eventually passed onto the cruel slave-breaker Mr. Covey.  Douglass had been rebellious during his time as a slave: continuing to learn how to read and write and refusing orders of his current master.  However, Mr. Covey would prove to be an excruciatingly cruel master, and his introduction symbolically occurs alongside Douglass’ complete breaking as a slave.  When this occurs, his intellectual thinking is momentarily lost, as Douglass describes his leisure time being spent in “a beast-like stupor between sleep and wake”.  The reappearance of the word “beast” is an excellent choice of diction, and functions as a metaphor of Douglass’ temporarily lost intellect and broken soul.  Once again, it is under the hand of the cruelest slave owner that Douglass’ will is broken, and only through the ignition of his burning desire for freedom does his situation improve.

            It is during this state of rebellion that Douglass’ ownership once again changes hands, this time to Mr. Freeland.  Douglass also begins to instruct his fellow slaves in reading and writing, and eventually conspires to lead an escape attempt.  Douglass comes to relish the experience, but remarks with discontent his Sunday School’s treatment by the hands of religious owners.  In an interesting twist of irony, Douglass and the slaves attempt to educate themselves as grown men would, while the slave owners “rushed upon us [Douglass and the slaves] with sticks and stones and broke up our virtuous little Sabbath School at St. Michael’s–all calling themselves Christians!”  Douglass’ diction and tone help to bring the irony of the situation to light, and his exclamation and emphasis upon the word Christian is a prime highlight of his emotional protests.  Overall, Douglass’ rebelliousness and willingness to combat slavery seems to correlate with the condition of his master, culminating in achieving the greatest master of all: himself.