Religion 232 Faith After the Holocaust
Paper 1

Choose one of the following essay question options;

Choice 1:
"'Kill me, I don't understand it. Ordinary common sense can't comprehend it.'
'In that case, kill your ordinary common sense and maybe you'll understand it.'"
Aharon Appelfeld,Badenheim 1939

We have noted in class the frequent appearance in Holocaust literature of the motif of insane characters with strange hallucinations and premonitions of disaster. In a coherently argued, 5-6 page, double-spaced paper, answer the following question.

How do the authors of the Holocaust literature we read use crazy or sick characters to "kill [one's] common sense" in order to understand the Holocaust?

Your thesis statement should be the answer to this question, and you support it by doing the following:

Pick at least three scenes involving such characters from at least two of the assigned fictional accounts: Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939, Borowski's This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen, and/or Wiesel's Night. - and provide a literary analysis of each of those passages.
Note especially
- who is the "insane" character?
- what is the nature of their vision,hallucination,premonition?
- who is their audience and how do they react ?
-
Using arguments and evidence based on the language and literary context of each scene, what do you think is the meaning of these scenes? What points about the Holocaust do you think the authors are trying to convey by them?

 

Choice 2:

Satire 1: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2: trenchant wit, irony , or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary

"Or perhaps it was a book about satire, the only art form appropriate to our lives."
Aharon Appelfeld,Badenheim 1939

In a coherently argued, 5-6 page, double-spaced paper, answer the following:

How is Appelfeld's remark about satire applicable to the Holocaust literature we read? Does the literature we read support the view of Appelfeld's narrator that satire is a particularly appropriate way to convey the truth of the Holocaust (if that's what the narrator means by "our lives")?

Your thesis statement should be the answer to either of these two questions

Using the Webster's Dictionary definition of satire, pick at least three scenes from at least two of the assigned fictional accounts: Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939, Borowski's This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen, and/or Wiesel's Night that use satire or irony to represent the Holocaust - and provide a literary analysis of each of those passages.

Using arguments and evidence based on the language and literary context of each scene, what do you think is the meaning of these scenes? What points about the Holocaust do you think the authors are trying to convey by them?