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.