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The Agony
In The Shawl, there are no direct descriptions of how Nazi slaughtered Jewish people, but all the same I can sense the persecution they had suffered, not only physical sufferings such as hunger, miserable living condition, and death, but also mental agony such as the deep sorrow when a mother watched the death of her baby while she could do nothing about it. It seems to me that every word in this story is saturated with tear and blood, and these suffering Jewish people, including the little infant, give out loud but soundless cries which shake my nerves.
Cynthia Ozick uses various devices of language to make us feel the agonies of those Jewish people persecuted by Nazi. These agonies came from their tortured body as well as their tortured and twisted heart.
¡°Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell.¡± (Paragraph 1, Line 5) There are repetitions of ¡°cold¡±. Stella is the main reason which cause the death of Magda, because she took away the shawl, the very thing that Magda lived on. The coldness existed in her body as well as in her heart. There are other repetitions of ¡°cold¡± in the story ¡°I was cold.¡± (Page , Paragraph 5) and ¡°and afterward she was always cold, always. The cold went into her heart Rosa saw that Stella¡¯s heart was cold¡± (Page , Paragraph 6, Line 1-)The torture of life had squeezed the last bit of love out of Stella, and in her heart there was only the coldness of hell. The repetition of ¡°always¡± here also reinforces her coldness.
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¡°Round¡± appears several times in the story. ¡°a round infant in arms¡± (Page 1, Paragraph 1, Line5); ¡°The little round head.¡± (Page 1, Paragraph , Line 6); ¡°It was fat with air, full and round.¡± (Page 1, Paragraph 5, Line ) At first it may give us an impression that the baby was pudgy and lovely, but finally it turns out to be a fact that the baby was terribly hungry. Her face and belly looked round because her arms and legs were extremely thin.
¡°They were in a place without pity, all pity was annihilated in Rosa, she looked at Stella¡¯s bones without pity.¡± Here ¡°pity¡± appears three times but the three indicate different things. The first one indicates the ¡°pity¡± for the suffering Jewish people, who lived in an environment where nobody showed synpathy to them. The second ¡°pity¡± is in a general sense, the cruelty of reality had made Rosa¡¯s heart cruel as well. The third ¡°pity¡± means the pity for Stella.
The word ¡°nipple¡± appears frequently. ¡°Magda took Rosa¡¯s nipple¡± (Paga1, Paragraph 1, Line 5) ¡°Such a good child, she gave up screaming, and sucked now only for the taste of the drying nipple itself.¡± (Page 1, Paragraph , Line 6-7) ¡°Ever since the drying up of Rosa¡¯s nipples¡¡±(Page , Paragraph 6, Line 11) ¡°A tide of commands hammered in Rosa¡¯s nipples¡± (Page , Paragraph 1, Line ) In this story the nipples symbolize a mother¡¯s love. Usually an infant draws nourishment from mother¡¯s nipples. Nipples are the very thing a baby lives on. But Rosa¡¯s breasts were dry and were unable to feed her baby. But there was still love in it, though this love had been made apathetic by Nazi¡¯s unparalleled persecution upon Jewish people. When Magda was in danger, Rosa¡¯s love awakened and urged her to save her baby.
There is the use of repetition of a sentence. ¡°Rosa knew Magda was going to die very soon.¡± (Page , Paragraph , Line 1) ¡°Rosa knew Magda was going to die very soon.¡± (Page , Paragraph , Line 6) This repetition shows Rosa¡¯s mental state. She was terribly worried that someone might inform of Magda¡¯s existence, might steal and eat her. She was waiting for something bad to happen, meanwhile she was extremely worried about and afraid of it.
Here is another example of repetition which reinforces our impression of Rosa¡¯s great pain when she watched her baby¡¯s death. ¡°She only stood, because if she ran they would shoot, and if she tried to pick up the the sticks of Magda¡¯s body they would shoot, and if she let the wolf¡¯s screech ascending now through the ladder of her skeleton break out, they would shoot.¡± (Page , Paragraph , Line 6-8)The repetition of ¡°if¡± and the heavy result ¡°they would shoot¡± show us the dilemma of Rosa¡¯s situation. How anxiously she wished to run and to pick up her baby, while how helplessly she stood at a loss what to do. The three ¡°they would shoot¡± deny all possibilities of action, and greatly impress us of the danger and threat of the situation, the great agony and depair of Rosa, and the ferocity of Nazi.
The author describes the characters with lots of metaphors.
She draws us a vivid picture of the characters¡¯ appearance. ¡°Her knees were tumors on sticks, her elbows chicken bones¡± (Page 1, Paragraph 1, Line 7) This is a horrible vision of a girl¡¯s knees and elbows. We may see those in concentration camps had been tortured into ill shapes. ¡°The duct-crevice extinct, a dead volcano, blind eye, chill hole.¡±(Page 1, Paragraph , Line 10) A mother¡¯s breasts should be full and round, should be a source of love and life, but for Rosa¡¯s breasts, there was¡¯t even a sniff of milk. Her breasts were thin, lifeless and cold and lost the ability of feeding a baby.
The characters¡¯ actions are also described with metaphors. ¡°and Rosa never stopped walking, a walking cradle.¡± (Page 1, Paragraph 1, Line5) Usually when we see a mother nursing her baby, we see a tranquil picture. But here, this mother had to hide her baby close to her bosom while still walking, or else she might be shot if she stop. It was definitely a miserable situation for a mother. ¡°someone who is already a floating angel, alert and seeing everything, but in the air, not there, not touching the ground.¡± (Page 1, Paragraph , Line ) Angel is already light, and a ¡°floating angel¡± indicates that Rosa seemed to be of no weight at all. At that time, she was totally out of strength.
¡°As if teetering on the tips of her fingernails.¡± Here I think the author uses a little exaggeration. A man teetering on the tips of his fingernails is like a cone standing on its tip, very unsteady. So Rosa was walking in a trance, in an unsteady way.
Synecdoche is used here. ¡°She was high up, elevated, riding someone¡¯s shoulder¡Above the shoulder a helmet glinted¡Below the helmet a black body like a domino and a pair of black boots hurle themselves in the direction of the electrified fence.¡± Here the author surely wants to describe a Nazi soldier, but instead of saying ¡°a man wearing a helmet, black uniform and black boots¡±, she merely uses parts of the body, the helmet, the uniform and the boots to represent the whole person. Through her description, she doesn¡¯t give us a conception of a man, a human being, but only a cruel, merciless image of a German soldier. Here the ¡°helmet¡± symbolizes war and killing, and ¡°black¡± gives us a sense of terror and death.
¡°She could leave the line for a minute and push Magda into the hands of any woman on the side of the road.¡± ¡°And even she fled the line for half a second and pushed the shawl-bundle at a stranger, would the woman take it?¡± (Page 1, Paragraph , Line 1-4) Now we may see the comparison. In the previous sentence, the movements are in a normal speed and the time is longer than that in the second sentence. While in the second sentence, the time is changed into ¡°half a second¡± and the movements are all in a hurry. In the first sentence, Magda¡¯s identity is still clear, but in the second one, her identity becomes vague, only a ¡°shawl-bundle¡±. Likewise, ¡°the hands of any woman¡± is changed into ¡°stranger¡±. All shows the urgency of the situation that Rosa must give Magda away quickly and the risk and danger that she might be noticed and shot by the soldiers.
Magda, a fifteen months old infant, was as hungry and ill-shaped as other people, but she showed great vitality. She struggled hard to live, eager to get back the shawl, the very thing she lived on. ¡°Magda flopped onward with her little pencil legs scribbling this way and that, in search of the shawl; the pencils faltered at the barracks opening.¡± (Page , Paragraph 6, Line-) ¡°Magda, in the sunlight, swaying on her pencil legs, was howling¡± (Page , Paragraph, Line 10) ¡°Magda was wavering in the perilous sunlight of the arena, scribbling on such pitiful little shins.¡±(Page , Paragraph 10, Line 1) She moved with an infant¡¯s clumsiness, but still the movements showed vitality and Magda¡¯s great desire to live, despite her unhealthy condition. Here the author repetes the word ¡°pencil¡±, trying to make a contrast between the ill shape of her body and her strong wish to live.
¡°A tide of commands hammered in Rosa¡¯s nipples Fetch, get, bring!¡± (Page , Paragraph 1, Line) These three words were all in one syllable. The single syllable of each word gives a strong rhythm.They were uttered out soundlessly from Rosa¡¯s heart with tremendous force.
¡°Rosa lifted, shook, whiped, unfurled.¡± (Page , Paragraph , Line 14) Between this series of actions there is no ¡°and¡± as a conjunction. These four actions were at one go and also these four verbes, each within two syllables, give us a feeling of rhythm. We may see the anxiety and terror in Rosa and the urgency of the moment.
¡°In the barracks they spoke of ¡®flowers¡¯, of ¡®rain¡¯ excrement, thick turd-braids, and the slow stinking maroon waterfall that slunk down from the upper bunks¡¡± (Page , Paragraph , Line 6-7) The two words ¡°flowers¡± and ¡°rain¡± are in quotation marks. Flowers and rain, words of very good meaning, should be something beautiful and nourishing. But here the two word are of rather negative sense. What these people spoke of turned out to be something extremely ugly and filthy. This great contrast reveals to us a shocking fact of the living condition of Jewish people in the concentration camp. The cruelty of reality had deprived these people of ability of enjoying beauty, or even, Nazi had taken away the last bit of beauty from their life. Where they lived was only a hellish place, filled with the smell of excrement and death.
Another feature of the passage is the broken structure of sentence, including participles and minor sentences. For instance, the second whole paragraph on the first page. Sentences are broken into small pieces by commas. Rosa obviously walked mechanically, nearly unaware of her own being. We may clearly feel the fatigue of Rosa during the march. This pattern of sentence exists through out the whole passage, so during the whole story, Rosa was in a half-conscious state, the severe physical and mental torture was so heavily laid upon her that she was made insensitive. She was indifferent to her own hunger and uncaring to Stella¡¯s skinny legs.
All through the broken pieces of sentence in the passage I can feel the agony, sometimes vague, like hands and feet that become numb in too cold weather. But sometimes it reveals its fierceness by the devices of language Cynthia Ozick uses.
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