Reading Journal-Assignment 8

How does the poem opening the work affect how you read the main body of the text?
For my personal reading experience, the most effective result of the poem opening the story was that it gets you thinking about all those little things that we so often taken for granted.

Sum up what the poem is saying in one sentence.
Appreciate the things of life that we normally take for granted, and if you do not you should be cursed.

What are the key characteristics of the narrator which Levi chooses to present in this work; how would you describe the narrator?
Key characteristics-cynical, not foolishly hopeful, very matter of fact
Cynical (“Only a minority of ingenuous and deluded souls continued to hope…” p. 20)
I would say that the narrator is a great observer of things as they actually happen. I feel like I get all the minute details, as well as the overarching issues, relayed to me in such a way that I have a really clear vision of what is taking place in the text.

Does this add to or take away from your ability to sympathize with the narrator?
I still sympathize with the reader even though he’s not this innocent, naïve, hopeful figure. He is explaining the type of torture and mistreatment that he had to endure and I feel like there’s no way that I wouldn’t be able to sympathize with him. He seems very real to me and I understand the mentality that he’s adopted in order to survive.

Which moment(s) in the text stand out or make the strongest impact on you? Why?

p. 21 “…neither Italian nor German, had the courage to come and see what men do when they know they have to die…But the mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care…Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?”
--This part of the story really impacted me because for one, it shows that it is a disturbing display to watch someone prepare to die, and second, because Levi touches on a really interesting concept; the concept that mothers, good mothers, are still going to provide their children with the things they need even if it’s a “waste” in a sense because next they will be dead.

p. 22 “Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction. The different emotions that overcame us, or resignation, of futile rebellion, of religious abandon, of fear, of despair, now joined together after a sleepless night in a collective, uncontrolled panic.”
--This moment gives the idea that time is not your friend a whole new meaning. The idea that the “dawn” is the betrayer, bringing with it inevitable death seemed very profound to me. And that this inevitability of destruction instills a panic was very haunting for me when I was reading this.

p. 28 “But there is also a tap – and above it a card which says that it is forbidden to drink as the water is dirty. Nonsense. It seems obvious that the card is a joke, ‘they’ know that we are dying of thirst and they put us in a room, and there is a tap, and Wassertrinken Verboten. I drink and I incite my companions to do likewise, but I have to spit it out, the water is tepid and sweetish, with the smell of a swamp.”
--I love to drink a lot of water all throughout the day. I had a full bottle of water with me when I was reading this. So when I read of these people’s undying thirst my heart truly went out to them. I felt so much physical anxiety and pain for these people at the thought of being taunted with a source of water they could not utilize. I thought the portrayal of their continuous thirst was actually one of the most horrible things to read about (considering how tragic that would be for me if I were in their position).

p. 30 “But by now my belief is that all this is a game to mock and sneer at us. Clearly they will kill us, whoever thinks he is going to live is mad, it means that he has swallowed the bait, but I have not.”
--This moment is so powerful, yet so sad when he realizes that he must accept death and reject all hope of living because that would inevitably lead to his death (the death of his mental sanity, which is death according Levi’s ideas of survival).

p. 43 “We Italians had decided to meet every Sunday evening in a corner of the Lager, but we stopped it at once, because it was too sad to count our numbers and find fewer each time, and to see each other even more deformed and more squalid.”
--I thought this moment that we see that their sense of community and fellowship end, due to the disheartening effect their meetings had on their morale, was so sad. I felt very impacted at this moment reading how they had to stop coming together as a people because they could physically see their own demise.