Comments

Miss, I commented on Youssef's, Pepe's and Leyton's blogs. Not the whole LLR, but its most representative figures ;)

Fatelessness' Terms

Crematorium: a building where dead people's bodies are burnt, usually as part of a funeral ceremony.


Gypsies: a member of a race of people originally from northern India who typically used to travel from place to place, and now live especially in Europe and North America.


Barracks: a building or group of buildings where soldiers live.


Source: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ (Cambridge Dictionaries)

Quotes Analysis

1) "We returned to the room on the street side. Evening had drawn in. We closed the windows, with the blackout paper stuck over the panes, on the indigo-hued, humid spring evening. That entirely confined us within the room. The hubbub was by now tiring, and the cigarette smoke also started to sting my eyes. I was driven to yawning a lot." (Page 22)

The narrator's tone is dark, as the imageries presented stablish: the sun has come down and the streetlights did not iluminate the scene because the windows were blacked out with paper. The indigo-hued alludes to the color of the sky in that moment, during which the day was almost over. Indigo is a very dark blue colour, near to black, so that is why it supportes the dark mood. Georg's family was confined, a strong verb that makes the reader believe they have no physical scape, but it is also directly related to the hopeless of their situation. Certain elements about this physical and metaphorical prison, make the narrator feel unconfortable: the cigarette smoke, which represents the one emitted by crematorium smokestacks. This last reference strictly represents the narrator's fate, conditioned to end in a concentration camp.

2) "That lousy feeling may perhaps have been the reason why I was none too eager to take leave of Mother. It was she who insisted it would be late, given that those with yellow stars are only permitted to show themselves on the street up to eight o'clock. But I explained to her that now that I have the identification papers, I no longer need to be so dreadfully puntilious abput each and every regulation." (Page 31)

Even though the detachment that the narrator projects when recalling his relation with his mother, in this pasage, due to something, he refuses to leave her. By adressing the Jews as those with the yellow stars, he refers to them in the same way than people considered normal do. He then starts giving excuses for being late at work, arguing his identification papers allow him to do so, though those considerations do not really exist. He does not want to leave his mother, who offers him security while his father is away at labour camps. This situation is a basic instinct that remains hidden in everyone: looking for your mom when danger is near. 

Chapter 2

1) What characters are introduced?

The Steiners, the Fleischmanns and the two sister (Annamarie's friends)

2) Choose two characters and select a quote to describe them physically or psycologically.

Uncle Fleischmann is described as a person easy to get angry, he did not accept opinions different to hims. "Uncle Fleischmann got extremely worked up: 'It's always you who has to be right', he groused." (Page 32) The author adds a bit of humour when describing this character that was quite childish by blurting out that Uncle Steiner can not be always right.

Elder sister is driscibed as very emotionally unstable, as the quote states: "At first she merely fell silent, then very slowly, but with softness I felt as almost palpable, her lips parted as if she were wishing to say something. That was not what happened, however, but something else, much odder: she burst into tears. She buried her head in the angle of her elbow, which was resting on the table, her shoulders shaken by tiny jerks." (Page 37) Many actions happen in short while, and they are all related to the elder girl's emotional inestability. She could not cope with being Jew and discriminated due to that. It is expected for her to behave this way as she is still a girl, opposite to Uncle Fleischmann's case.

3) What is the narrative technique? Provide evidence.

First person, protagonist. "I was perturbed, gicen I was to blame, but I had no way of knowing[...]" (Page 37)

4) Describe the setting of this chapter.

The protagonist's hometown, Budapest. Summer. War time. "The landings by Allied powers had now 'definitively sealed the fate' of Germans." (Quote related to War time.)

Chapter 6

Minorities

Georg describes Zeitz's living conditions, which even though were
told to be favorable, actually were not. However, Georg tries to
behave like a good prisoner, with "good intentions" toward the work
required, what is the way everyone in Zitez try to behave like. To
accomplish this, the protagonist is helped by Bandi Citrom a Zitez's
prisoner introduced on fifth chapter. He tells Georg the kind of
prisoners that work on Zitez: the Latvians, the "Muslims"  and the
"Finns". These last ones were the ones who discriminate Georg for not
speaking Yiddish and then for being not a real Jew. Georg also
describes the hunger he suffers as the rations were reduced, what
turns into an increasing tiredness; and, he presents emerging figures
such as the German Kapo (head of other departments of the
concentration camps. E.g. Kitchen), the "Vorarbeiter" or foreman, the
Bloälestester, etc.  He also talks about three diferent ways of
scaping, one of which resulted on the three Latvian prisoners' death
due to their hanging. Due to hunger, Georg recalls the comerce within
Zites. But, as he was not considered a true Jew by the Finns who
promoted these selling, the prices he was asked to pay were higher
than the common amount required to normal prisoners. Finally, Georg
talks about the wooden shoes he was obliged to use, which caused
several injuries on his ankles and became a extra part of his body.
This last one was in its worst conditions, completely worn. Georg
recalls also, at the very end of this chapter, an episode in which he
was whipped by a "Todt" member,as he let a cement bag drop, incresing
then the amount of work he has to accomplish due to this fault.

Nazi and American Slavery

Further Oral Activity 2012: Comparisson between Nazi and American slavery.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uvapiP-AhUahr3TXg517XDOHftgZdfvy6WLApgtQ9Dc/edit#slide=id.p16