Women enjoyed employment gains during the war, 6 million women had entered the workforce for the first time, boosting the percentage of women in the total workforce to 35 percent in the manufacturing industry. After the war ended, over 85% of women wanted to keep their jobs although all were not able to do so.
A third point could be about women becoming more prevalent in the workplace.
The United States and the nations of Western Europe formed NATO as a means of enhancing collective defense, and United Nations began to function as a body, one of whose goals was the prevention of further war.
The second point of an essay could be how WWII led to the world seeing a necessity for a system that unifies the nations of humanity.
World War II also saw the dawn of the nuclear age.
One point for an essay would be how WWII led to the looming threat of nuclear annihilation.
Ken Birman, a professor in the department of computer science at Cornell University, responded, “Historians will be harsh when they judge us relative to this one aspect: The harm to entire cultures that oppressive monitoring and surveillance can cause is frightening, and those future historians will be in a position to document that harm – harm that people are actively inflicting today for all sorts of reasons.”
Question 2.
Craig Burdett, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “The greatest challenge facing society is determining how much privacy and autonomy we are willing to cede in exchange for convenience and features…. The internet, in and of itself, is benign – like a handgun. But the companies and individuals behind the services are the greatest threat.”
Perfect for question 2!
Jerry Michalski, founder of the Relationship Economy eXpedition, said, “Half a century is a long time. Many futures seem possible; I’ll describe one. Software has ‘personhood.’ It has rights, personality and limited responsibility. Cryptocurrencies and distributed systems have helped one-third of Earth’s population separate from nation states and join ‘nations of choice,’ ranging from Burning Man to racially segregated enclaves. The digital platforms these nations use are larger and more powerful than the old nation-states. Few people have privacy or full-time jobs. Facts hardly exist: Everything is easy to fake, so everything is in doubt. Digital platforms still haven’t figured out how to stop stalking us and use their presence and power to help us govern together better.”
A point for question 3.
Because Elizabeth's parents didn't understand what transgender was so they feared it and thought it may be contagious so they sent their daughter away for years. Elizabeth was exiled.
The parallel between Elizabeth and Kaysen is that they both lived in an environment and/or time where the terminology for transgender-ism didn't exist or at least they weren't aware of it. It's difficult to address a problem that doesn't have a name.
Despite Kaysen being transgender he's still a kid who has homework and school. He's still human.
A Handmaid’s Tale shows how vital initial action could be to prevent somebody from exploiting the fear of the situation.
A Handmaid's Tale shows us how powerful fear alone can be in controlling a society.
“alternative facts”
Those in control are the ones who shape history.
The fact there is no new technology in the Republic of Gilead (where A Handmaid’s Tale is set) that doesn’t already exist in today makes it that more unnerving; the society isn’t one based in the future, but one in the present and shows that such worlds are indeed, very possible.
Speculative fiction is set within an existing framework similar to our world, this makes speculative fiction much more believable.
“Burgess uses music to address the question of whether high art is civilising.”
Just because something is considered of higher status and/ or quality such as high art doesn't mean that it is more civilized.
if we are forced to be good, does that necessarily make us good?
Such a powerful question. Key word, "force". If you have no choice to align yourself with what is considered to be "good" will you even view that as "good" and does that make you "good"?
questions not only on free will, but what is natural.
Human nature is being examined as well.
which questions what exactly makes a person good
One of the most important aspects of dystopian fiction is that challenges long existing ideas of morality. It makes us question what is means to be a good person. We've accustomed to the idea of being "good" for so long we don't question it.
A common theme is dystonia fiction is the fear or some type of advancement going out of control. Either being technology or power resulting in world altering effects.
Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction that began as a response to utopian literature
This suggests that envisioning a perfect society could be dangerous.
Page 16 suggests that marriage is what keeps women from progressing as men do. It also suggests that women are being treated as a vessel for reproduction.
"Most of the younger women no longer even thought about them. A thousand experts voices applauded their femininity, their adjustment to their new maturity. All they had to do was devote their live from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children."
Page 18 "She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a house wife and mother".
"Anatomy is destiny" Page 24
"Though no group of women has ever pushed these natural restrictions as far as the American wife, it seems that she still cannot accept them with good grace."
Page 23
Ways of solving the issue are suggested through means of making sex more interesting. Everything ties into reproduction.
"No month went by without a new book by a psychiatrist or sexologist offering technical advice on finding greater fulfillment through sex."
A male humorist jokes that women are unhappy because they have too many rights, they can't handle complex decision making.
Page 29 "In the secret to feminine fulfillment is having children, never have so many women, with the freedom to choose, had so many children, in so few years, so willingly."
On page 15 a women asks "Is this all?" in reference to her life as a stay at home mother. The issue with no name seems to be the limiting of women's possibilities. The issue is that women have been conditioned to believe that their lives should be as nurturing house servants.
"Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity."
"They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents.They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers."
Wanting a job is to want to be a man. Outdated gender roles reinforce women's limited rights.
They are told how lucky they are to have no job.
Page 24 Women don't realize how luck they are to have no job, they're free. "Does she really, secretly still want to be a man?"
Page 32 "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: "I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.""
Page 31 Doctors prescribing tranquilizers to women.
Page 27 For young new wives who've quite high school and college marry.This is their dream. "These women are very "feminine" in the usual sense, and yet they still suffer the problem".
Page 26 - 27 "To say that education and independence and equality with men have made American women unfeminine."
Education is shown to be what makes women unhappy.
On page 22 we see that women are unsatisfied with their lives. They have no idea what the issue is, they don't know why they can't have fulfillment as stay at home wives with no career. That is the issue itself, they're so stuck in the housewife mentality they don't realize that they want to be so much more than a mother - servant.
The idea what is feminine is being defined for women so that they are limited in what they can do and look like.
The people who play games
Women
Booby Clayton was deprived of a basic education.
By the 1920s the need for company towns had declined significantly due to increased national affluence.
Economic boom and national influence diminished the need for privatized slavery .
he provided his employees with a quality of life otherwise unattainable
They dangled a prize in front of their workers faces while they never stopped running on a treadmill to catch it.
Pullman appeared to be a model town,
An illusion from the outside view.
Other times, a town may not officially be a company town, but it may be a town where the majority of citizens are employed by a single company, thus creating a similar situation to a company town (especially in regard to the town’s economy).
A more covert way of keeping people tied down to your company.
The remoteness and lack of transportation prevented workers from leaving for other jobs or to buy from other, independent merchants.
Choosing remote locations was another factor that kept these people enslaved to these companies.
Once at Lowell, they lived in boardinghouses and were required to attend church and lead a “moral” life.
Forced religion and beliefs as a means of keeping people in line.
Although some businesses offered idyllic-looking settings, a bevy of companies once made more money from swindling their workers than from what they mined or produced.
Again, the idea of privatized slavery, possibly what Oliver could be. Everything your workers earn revolves around your company. Company made money, company made schools, their workers lives now belong to them.
Company towns play into the book's theme of ways of the past returning. Lauren's dad believes that American towns are going to be bought and privatized like company towns of the past, like Oliver.
Another parallel to the past returning may be privatized slavery. Like the coal prison camps of the past, the characters worry that Oliver may strip them of their freedom. Twenty first century slavery.
company towns—communities built by businesses—sprouted up across the country.
Oliver
"Did you ever notice" "How nothing around here is named after a women?" "Unless shes the Virgin. I guess you're only famous if you're a virgin."
Because of Cleofilas status she has been influenced to believe that she doesn't deserve the love that she desires.
Violence against women is a reoccurring theme in the story. Women are treated as disposable objects, object for service and sex. When that object has fulfilled its needs or overstayed its welcome in this male dominated society it can be thrown away.
Maximiliano shot his wife at the ice house because she attacked him with a mop.
Women's bodies are being found on the side of the rode and beaten.
Cleofilas shivers because she fears what men are capable of. Her fears reflect that all women in this society.
"Because the towns here are built so that you have to depend on husbands. Or you stay home."
"There is no place to go."
Quotes reinforcing women's lack of belonging in this community.
The story also explores expectations of a women in society and the pressures of finding a husband. Cleofilas has to remind herself that her beer bellied, belligerent, husband is the man she's been waiting for her entire life, at least that's what society has conditioned her to belief. A women who tends to the needs of her husbands beckoned calls, a subservient women, that's what she's supposed to be.
Story plays on the themes of women's sense of belonging (or lack there of) in a male dominated society.
Story focuses on parental figures, specifically fathers and men that may be unreliable. Some of the men are the women's partners, some are their sons, they always end up leaving in some way, sometimes in the form of death.
The older, stronger, seemingly more competent sibling is dead, yet, the younger, weaker brother lives. The mother compares the younger brother to the older brother, making the younger brother feel inadequate. He doesn't belong.
Maybe the living brother giving the dead brother his clothes is representative of "dressing up" someone else in the identity of another for the sake of still existing.
The final statement being made is that recording and telling the stories of others is the ultimate form of allowing them to live on after they have been dead and forgotten. This is how we respect them, honor their legacy. The essence of people is eternal once written down and passed on.
It seems that this section about the man coming back to the house is representative of the brother finally acknowledging the ghost of this long lost person who lingers in his and the mother's mind.
"The dead move on" "But we just stay here"
These lines seem to play into another negative aspect of ghostliness, the living refusing to move forward, allowing the ghosts of the past to tightly hold you in place.
"Never turn your back on a ghost."
Lingering in the background, overlooked, forgotten, yet still there with no place to belong.
The concept of ghostliness is also used to describe people and the memories tied to them in a painful sense. No matter how hard the mother tried she couldn't forget him, his ghost continued to haunt her.
A main point of passing on the stories of others and the traditions of others who came before you is so that they aren't forgotten.Their legacy can continue so we may gain something from it, learn from the past.
In the beginning of the writing the concept of ghostliness is being used to describe identity.
Sec. 10.
Section 10, claimant supplying evidence. When a fugitive has fled, his claimant may make satisfactory proof of the fact to any court of record in the State or Territory from whence he escaped, and the said court shall cause a record to be made of the fact, and a description of the fugitive and a transcript of this record shall be full and conclusive evidence in the tribunal where the fugitive may be found, and upon its being produced, the fugitive shall be delivered up. In the absence of such transcript of record, the claim shall be determined by other satisfactory proof, competent in law.
Sec. 7.
The main idea of section 7 is that anyone who aids a fugitive slave will be fined 1,000 dollars for each slave and imprisoned for no more then six months. If the commissioner must do so then they are entitled to a 10 dollar fee.
Sec. 6.
The main idea of section 6 is that if a slave escapes into another state, free or slave state, an appointed authority or anyone who can claim ownership of said slave, has the legal right to retrieve them from wherever they may be hiding. Even if the claimant doesn't have proof or certificate of ownership they may still seize the fugitive and bring them to the tribunal.
Sec. 4.
Section 4, the duty of commissioners. The Commissioners shall grant certificates to claimants, upon satisfactory proof, with authority to take fugitives to the State or Territory from which they have fled.
Sec. 3.
Section 3 states that officers shall be appointed to claim fugitive slaves.
Sec. 2.
Section 2 covers the appointment of said commissioners of duty.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the persons who have been, or may hereafter be, appointed commissioners,
Section 1 details the legal duties of commissioners.
Sec. 5.
The main idea of section 5 is that it is the duty of the appointed authority is to cease the fugitive slave. If the appointed authority aids the fugitive in escape or fails to capture said fugitive, the marshal will be fined 1,000 dollars. Also, bystanders are responsible for reporting that this law has been followed.
Sec. 9.
Section 9 states that the appointed claimant must retrieve the fugitive no matter where they flee in the United States and that the claimant can employ as many assistants as they deem necessary. Everyone involved will be paid the same.
Sec. 8.
The main idea of section 8 is that those who are obligated to cease fugitive slaves will be paid for their cervices and paid depending upon what services that have conducted.
Section 1.
The main idea of this section is that when a slave escapes from a certain state it is the duty of the authorities within that state to track the fugitive slave down and bring them back.
Sec. 3.
The main idea of this section is that once a fugitive slave escapes a state that they were enslaved in, the owners and authority of that state can track them into another state then take them back.
Sec. 2.
The main idea of this section is that if an authority or any person who aids a fugitive slave in escaping will be fined and imprisoned.
"When there's no name for a problem, there's no way of identifying it, if there's no way of identifying it, there's no way of solving it." - Kimberle Crenshaw
Intersectionality is the idea that social justice issues such as racism and sexism are over lapping issues, ones that are interconnected. This creates multi layered social issues that are much more complex to solve than we think.
"The distinguishing factor between well known African Americans who have been killed and ones that aren't known is gender." - Kimberle Crenshaw
f Margaret Garner, the slave mother who killed her child rather than see it taken back to slavery.
Inspiration for Sethe in Beloved.
lacerations
The Native Americans had an intimate relationship with the Earth. Industrialization has scarred the Earth, tainting it's pure surface.
Virtually everyone had no clue as to what home meant because the land they were born on had been taken by the government
A sense of displacement.
Indian Citizenship Act extends U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans.
Its odd that the people whom originally inhabited the land are granted rights so late in this timeline of citizenship rights being granted.
erasure
The main point of Multiculturalism, removing the past of those have come to America. Once one comes to America they must denounce their cultural roots, thus, being reborn as an American citizen. The issue with this that once one's past is erased, their value and identity is erased.
Lowe notes that they are a “politics whose vision is not the origin but the destination.”
A political vision that focuses on progression rather than conservatism.
The “production of multiculturalism” enacts a superficial aesthetic sheen, that, as Lowe argues, “obscures the ways in which that aesthetic representation is not an analogue for the material positions, means, or resources of those populations.
I believe this could be interpreted as Multiculturalism acting of a facade cultural inclusion while not actually valuing the people of the culture.
“yellow peril”, each represents national anxieties over the perpetual figure of Asians, “Indeed, it is precisely the unfixed liminality of the Asian immigrant – geographically, linguistically, and racially at odds with the context of the “national” – that has given rise to the necessity of endlessly fixing and repeating such stereotypes.” (19)
"Yellow Peril", the threat to the integrity of traditional American identity, being of white European origin. Asian culture is viewed as something alien and unassailable. If integrated.
Despite that fact that Asians have been a part of America for generations, helping build the country. America still view s them as alien.
The passage continues to talk about America viewing Asia as a militaristic and economic antagonist yet, Asian laborers are necessary to America. Simply put, we treat Asians as an invisible tool that has helped build the country.
From page 2 - 4 I believe that the passage is displaying the complex nature of an Asian American women designing an Asian war memorial of a war that Americans fought. The memorial doesn't represent traditional American identity by design. This was intentional, the memorial seems to challenge the idea of American identity. American is meant to be a conglomeration of all cultures yet American identity has been exclusively associated with white Europeans. Asian culture is viewed as barbaric and exotic which deems it unassailable. Considering this, America fought against Asians, then, an Asian whom is an American citizen creates a memorial for that very war.
In the beginning of the passage we have a comparison the construction of the Vietnam memorial (1982 - 84) versus the Lincoln memorial which took sixty years to complete. I believe this was done to show which is more important to America. We were meant to forget the Vietnam war.
It’s purpose is to serve as a compelling counter-narrative to the material and ideational conditions which keep us trapped in an authoritarian and ecocidal world where, as Margaret Thatcher put it, “there is no alternative”.
Solarpunk's purpose
I read these stories, look to the future, and think “Yes, we can make it. Yes, we can change our ways. Yes, we can at least envision possibilities more varied than our own destruction.” And, if we can envision them through our wonderful imaginations, perhaps they can one day become realized fact.
The strongest point of Cli-fi.
critics assume that stories which try to deal in an optimistic view of the future must be somehow inferior to those which take a dark, tragic, and highly-dramatized perspective of events to come.
We have a tendency to favor chaos over harmony.
Other stories are set farther ahead at a time where the modern world issues are gone; cities have gone “green,” and feature skyscrapers covered in oxygen-producing moss, bio-luminescent trees light the streets where electric vehicles slip silently by; massive bio-domes in orbit provide the departure point for vast flotillas of exploration and scientific craft to the inner and outer Solar System; political decisions are no longer based around power or profit, but what is genuinely good for the world.
This is where the hopefulness for the future begins.
Solarpunk protagonists hack power grids to provide free energy to the poor, build intersectional unions to defend against the agents of the matrix, and lead the way into space for the betterment of all peoples — not the stockholders.
Solar-punk stories often follow a robin hood like story arch.
hile much of the mainstream science fiction revels in increasing gloom (the new Star Trek was literally, as well as figuratively, overwhelmed with darkness), Solarpunk tries to imagine brighter futures
Cli-fi needs to stop wallowing in the darkness, instead, we must let the light in with Solar-punk.
as your parents or grandparents about “duck and cover” sometime). My generation, and those younger than me, have inherited this generational fear, even as we have acquired new ones all our own.
The great fear of yesterday was nuclear annihilation, the great fear of today is annihilation by climate change.
Given this, looking ahead might be difficult. What is there to look forward to? Well, that’s the question which the science fiction movement called Solarpunk is trying to ask.
Again, Cli-fi may be failing because of its habit of making our future so bleak.
magining a future where green energy is accessible to everyone, where global politicians work tirelessly to rapidly reduce emissions, or where new technologies are discovered that safely and permanently remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere are absolutely worth air time. Cli-fi can act as prose for science. And on the topic of mitigating climate change, there is no such thing as too much prose.
The new wave of Cli-fi movies need to focus less on the disaster itself but more on how we have the power to prevent the disaster.
To this audience, cli-fi also has an important message to deliver – that of hope. That it is not, or will it be ever, too late to combat human-caused climate change.
What Cli-fi needs to do, this is where Solarpunk can come into play.
some audiences tend to disengage from climate change because of how overwhelming the issue may seem.
Perhaps new Cli-fi could put the power in the hands of the people.
More modern examples of cli-fi take their prose from real-life contemporary issues, imagining the effects of human-caused climate change. Some pieces of cli-fi are perhaps closer to the truth than others
This may be the issue itself, they've become too ordinary.
Hollywood and the entirety of the filmmaking industry can’t make the public mull over climate change differently, but a single screenwriter or novelist could. The power of the arts should not be underestimated.
The power of writing and rhetoric will be what sways the public towards Cli-fi.
A classic tale would need to be well-woven. Since next to everything decent coming to theaters these days is based on a book, maybe the next big cli-fi feature will be adapted from the pages of a juicy novel.
Taking a look back into the past for guidance.
It would need a Jurassic Park-like touch, meaning the plot would need fairly sound scientific concepts mixed in with an intriguing plot.
Perfect example for the magazine article.
But it seems that the older climate fiction films, like Soylent Green, remain in better standing among the overall audiences. It’s high time for a brand new cli-fi classic.
Today's generation isn't so keen on Cli-fi.
Director Irwin Allen was evidently passionate about two elements he could slip into his film and TV show productions: 1) science and 2) disaster drama.
These two combined serve as the basis for all Cli-fi.
it was in the Roaring Twenties that the American family experienced the fad of needing (or at least thinking they needed) an automobile. Factories and cars became significant contributors of greenhouse gases which would have caused an increase in overall global warming.
One of the first major shifts in the world starting global warming.
The difference is that unlike science fiction, climate fiction is a warning of what has, will or could become of us as our climate changes. Of course some of the fiction is arguably farfetched, but the reality is that unlike an alien invasion or an AI rebellion, climate change is happening and these life-changing effects are highly likely to happen too.
Two major takeaways here..
But what are the differences between Sci-Fi and Cli-Fi?
Very important to take note of.
The internet is not a classroom — however much we like to think it is.
The internet doesn't provide direction in it's endless sea of knowledge.
(for instance, an author writing a pro-dog piece might write, “Everyone knows dogs make terrible pets, which is why they are so unpopular in American homes.”) If you were to only quote this sentence, in which the author is saying something that doesn’t fit with the overall argument/tone of the rest of the piece, you are misrepresenting the source to your reader.
Avoid taking things out of context.
Confirmation bias is our tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms our existing beliefs or ideas.
The desire of reinforcing beliefs, being told what you want to hear.
Confirmation Bias:
The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.
Fairness Bias: I'm going to let Jon Oliver explain this. Watch the video below.
Fairness bias avoids showing the number of people who are on any given side of a debate.
How does this form of media bias explain why I kept talking about Bird Box at the beginning of the semester?
A great question to ask in class.
What's a story that's shiny, new, and hopefully conflict-ridden?
This could play into our society's desire for instant gratification.
How often have you seen a picture shown on the news and thought--that tells the whole story?
A picture is only one piece of a puzzle
media is a mirror "reflecting everything we are as a people and civilization." And news media bias is not only political bias.
We are what we produce.
8. Solar Farms
Another useful concept
emissions need to decline rapidly across all of society’s main sectors, including buildings, industry, transport, energy, and agriculture, forestry, and other land use. Coal needs to go. Transportation needs to be electrified. Buildings need to become more energy efficient. Carbon taxes need to start at $135 per ton at the low end (currently, it’s $7).
Valid solutions
Now this is where we can introduce the logical thing. How do you think people even kids with disabilities feel when they see p.t barnum us people and lying about them to get fame and money. As someone who has observed and has some experiences with disability and the disable
Good use of musing, it needs some more but it helps add add emotional insight.
“This is a trading world” he wrote, : and men, women, and children. Who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the author of our nature”.
This was good, this passage reveals Barnum's character. This is what a profile essay should do.
As for the undertaking legitimate casting Barnum outmaneuvered wealthier bidder to acquire John scudder american museum.
An ongoing issue in the essay; vague sentences, poor sentence structure and grammar.
In 1829, at the age of 19 Barnum married a 21 year old woman Charity Hallett, who was to bear him four daughters.
How is this relevant?
Bethnel. Died in April 7, 1891, Bridgeport (https://www.britannica.com). However let’s get to know them both.
Very vague sentence, who is Bethnel? Plus, odd use of source.
Females, by contrast, were unaffected by heatwave conditions. However, female reproduction was affected indirectly because experiments showed that heatwaves damaged inseminated sperm within female reproductive tracts.
Take into account that these are insects not humans.
“To blame [climate change on] population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues.”
A semi valid point and good insight into the Pro-Life perspective.
EPA’s ability to protect the unborn from mercury pollution,” which, the ad continued, “causes permanent brain damage in the unborn and infants.”
potential point to use in the essay.
Hence the example from Whiplash in which the lead character Andrew goes on a first date with the lovely young Nicole. Through the shot choices and the way they are arranged in the scene, we get a few crucial pieces of information that inform the basic plot of the film, and which alert us to the underlying character differences that will eventually drive the couple apart in a later scene. Though the pair seem to be having a nice time and connecting (which is shown in intimate medium closeups), when we find out that Nicole doesn't have a major in college, a fact that contrasts sharply with Andrew's single-minded obsession with pursuing jazz drumming perfection, we cut out back to a wide two-shot that really emphasizes the physical distance between the two characters. This simple decision to cut back to the wide shot informs the audience of the philosophical rift between Andrew and Nicole, even before it ever becomes a significant plot point.
Differences in character and foreshadowing are done through cuts and closeups during the date scene.
The central verb in the sentence is is—a verb that doesn’t pack much punch.
Use "is" sparingly
He makes a lie of the notion, prevalent among some historians, that the SS men were so brutalized by their training that they would have killed anyone they were asked to. No, Groening’s decision-making process operated at a much less simplistic level. Yes, he claims that he was massively influenced by the propaganda of the times, but during the war he nevertheless made a series of personal choices.
A good point to consider.
Now in his 80s, he talks almost as if there was another Oskar Groening who worked at Auschwitz 60 years ago — and about that “other” Groening he can be brutally honest. He shields himself from taking full responsibility for playing a part in the extermination process by constantly referring to the power of the propaganda to which he was exposed, and the effect on him of the ultra-nationalistic family atmosphere in which he grew up.
referring to himself as a different person.
‘Must it be that way? Is this necessary?’ And of course it’s influenced by the fact that you said before, ‘Yes, well, it’s war,’ and we said, ‘They were our enemies.’”
Up until this point Oskar was not directly exposed to the horrors of Auschwitz, he questions it yet still goes along with it because of propaganda.
Groening manufactured for himself what he considered to be a tolerable life at Auschwitz. In his office he was insulated from the brutality, and when he was walking around the camp he could avert his eyes from anything that displeased him.
In Oskar's position, he was shielded from the brutality.
the propaganda I got as a boy in the press, the media, the general society I lived in made us aware that the Jews were the cause of the First World War, and had also ‘stabbed Germany in the back’ at the end. And that the Jews were actually the cause of the misery in which Germany found herself.
Propaganda framed Jews as the cause of WW I and Germany's issues.
So far Oskar Groening’s personal experience of Auschwitz was that it was a “normal” concentration camp for the detaining of political prisoners or other “enemies of the state,” albeit one where the rations for the SS members were particularly good. But, as he began his task of registering the prisoners’ money, he learned for the first time about the additional, “unusual” function of Auschwitz. “The people there [working in the barracks] let us know that this money didn’t all go back to the prisoners —Jews were taken to the camp who were treated differently. The money was taken off them without them getting it back.” Groening asked, “Is this to do with the ‘transport’ that arrived during the night?” His colleagues replied, “Well, don’t you know? That’s the way it is here. Jewish transports arrive, and as far as they’re not able to work they’re got rid of.” Groening pressed them on what “got rid of ” actually meant, and, having been told, says that his reaction was one of astonishment.
Oskar expresses initial shock at what was taking place at Auschwitz.
“We were accepted by the people who were there and they said, ‘Have you eaten anything yet?’ We hadn’t, and so they got us something.” Groening was surprised that in addition to the basic SS rations of bread and sausage there was also extra food available, consisting of tins of herring and sardines. Their new friends also had rum and vodka, which they put on the table and said, “Help yourself.” “We did this, and so we were quite happy.
Note that Oskar often frames moments in his time at Auschwitz as enjoyable.
“We were reminded that we had sworn an oath with the motto ‘My loyalty is my honor,’ and that we could prove this loyalty by doing this task which was now given to us — the details of which we would find out later.
A tactic used by Nazi Germany, sworn loyalty and withholding the truths that comes with the sworn oath.
“And when I came home my father said, ‘I was hoping that because you were wearing glasses you wouldn’t be accepted.’ And then he said, ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll see what you’ll get out of this.’”
Despite his vary own nationalistic father warning him of whats to come Oskar still proceeds because of sensationalism.
Germany’s quick victories in Poland and France the trainees were filled with “euphoria” and a feeling that “you wanted to be part of it.” Oskar Groening wanted to join an “elite” unit of the German army, just as his grandfather had done.
Sensationalism backed by indoctrination is the influencing factor here.
As a member of the Hitler Youth he took part in the burning of books written by “Jews or others who were degenerate.
Indoctrination by Nazi youth programs.
“Within six months [of the Nazis coming to power] the 5 million unemployed had vanished from the streets and so everybody had work.
The economic effect of Hitler's rise to power helped establish his Ethos and furthered the Nazi ideology.
lacking capital, his textile business went bankrupt in 1929
Finances played a role in the Nazi ideology as well.
He was born in 1921 in Lower Saxony, son of a skilled textile worker. Groening’s father was a traditional conservative, “proud of what Germany had achieved.” One of Groening’s earliest memories is of looking at photographs of his grandfather, who served in an elite regiment of soldiers from the Duchy of Brunswick
Oskar's views can be traced back to his father's ultra nationalistic influence during Oskar's childhood.
When he saw people in front of him who he knew were going to die within hours in the gas chambers, he says his feelings were “very ambiguous.” He says, “How do you feel when you’re in Russia, here’s a machine gun in front of you, and there’s a battalion of Russians coming running towards you and you have to pull the trigger and shoot as many as possible? I’m saying it on purpose like this because there’s always behind you the fact that the Jews are enemies who come from the inside of Germany. The propaganda had for us such an effect that you assumed that to exterminate them was basically something that happened in war. And to that extent a feeling of sympathy or empathy didn’t come up.” When pressed for the reason why children were murdered, Groening replies: “The children are not the enemy at the moment. The enemy is the blood in them. The enemy is their growing up to become a Jew who could be dangerous.”
Due to Nazi ideology, the killing of Jews is framed as a necessity of war, something that just has to happen whether we like it or not. The Jews are framed as enemies and killing them like defending yourself from Russians in combat is necessary.
“It’s impossible, I can’t work here any more. If it is necessary to exterminate the Jews, then at least it should be done within a certain framework.
Oskar insists that the extermination of the Jews be more humane.
This process [of selection] proceeded in a relatively orderly fashion but when it was over it was just like a fairground. There was a load of rubbish, and next to this rubbish were ill people, unable to walk, perhaps a child that had lost its mother, or perhaps during searching the train somebody had hidden — and these people were simply killed with a shot through the head. And the kind of way in which these people were treated brought me doubt and outrage. A child was simply pulled on the leg and thrown on a lorry … then when it cried like a sick chicken, they chucked it against the edge of the lorry. I couldn’t understand that an SS man would take a child and throw its head against the side of a lorry … or kill them by shooting them and then throw them on a lorry like a sack of wheat.”
Despite going along with the brutality Oskar was outraged with how it was being done.
Oskar Groening was posted to Auschwitz. He almost immediately witnessed a transport arriving at “the ramp” — the platform where the Jews disembarked. “I was standing at the ramp,” he says, “and my task was to be part of the group supervising the luggage from an incoming transport.” He watched while SS doctors first separated men from women and children, and then selected who was fit to work and who should be gassed immediately. “Sick people were lifted on to lorries,” says Groening. “Red Cross lorries — they always tried to create the impression that people had nothing to fear.”
Oskar was a bystander like many others in this situation. The Nazis often used tactics of deception to control the Jews.
the former concentration camp guard, who admits moral guilt but denies that he ever committed a crime, as he didn’t personally kill any of the prisoners.
Running from responsibility, a common theme among Auschwitz workers.
Whatever the reasons for becoming guards – financial, a thirst for adventure or conscription – Nazi ideology was rife and the ill-treatment of ‘enemies of the state’ was commonplace. As predominantly young, Aryan women aged between 17-45 (as strict entry criteria), these women had grown up in the midst of Nazism; many had been members of the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) and had grown up with Nazi propaganda. Further ideological training, which included propaganda films such as Jüd Süss, was imposed upon new recruits during their orientation period at Ravensbrück and manifested itself as violence within a matter of days. One prisoner noted how it took one guard just four days.
Nazi propaganda and its effects on citizens of Germany. (Aryan citizens)
Even Irma Grese claimed that the labour exchange ‘sent [her] to Ravensbrück’, where all female guards underwent training, and that ‘[she] had no option’.
Here we have another example of avoiding responsibility, "I had no option."
Many were not even members of the Nazi party. Unlike the overwhelming majority of male SS guards who were ardent believers in Nazi ideological and racial beliefs, less than 5 per cent of female guards were formal members of the Nazi party. For some then, the lure of a stable, well-paid job complete with uniform and accommodation was enough. Female guards earned approximately 185 RM, considerably more than the average wage of women of the same age in an unskilled factory job, 76 RM. Becoming a guard represented upward mobility for many of these under-educated and lower-class women.
Because of women's financial/ work disadvantages brought about by Nazi ideologies women sought work as guards as a result of higher than average wages.
¶ “Once they had taken off their clothes, the women went into the gas chamber and waited, thinking that they were in a shower. They couldn’t know where they really were.”¶ “Finally, the German bringing the gas would arrive; it took two prisoners from the Sonderkommando to help him lift up the external trapdoor, above the gas chamber; then he introduced Zyklon B through the opening. The lid was made of very heavy cement. The German would never have bothered to lift it up himself, as it needed two of us. Sometimes, it was me, sometimes others.”¶ “Once the gas had been thrown in, it lasted about 10 to 12 minutes, then finally you couldn’t hear anything, not a living soul.”¶ “When the job of cutting the hair and pulling out the gold teeth had been completed, two people came to take the bodies and to load them onto the hoist that sent them up to the ground floor of the building, and the crematorium ovens.”
All descriptions worth utilizing for the creative non fic
“What was destroyed in you by that extreme experience?”His response: “Life. Since then I’ve never had a normal life. Everything takes me back to the camp. Whatever I do, whatever I see, my mind keeps harking back to the same place. It’s as if the ‘work’ I was forced to do there had never really left my head. Nobody ever really gets out of the crematorium.”
This passage is a perfect example of how the work that Shlomo did permanently traumatized him as well as others who survived the experience.
For nearly 50 years he remained haunted and virtually silent about his role in the horror. “Not because I didn’t want to talk,” he said, “but because people didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to believe it.”
A common narrative among the stories of the Sonderkommando is that everyone refuses to hear their stories and their refusal to believe those stories.
This section speaks to the same issue throughout all perspectives of those working in Auschwitz. Those who either survived or were involved din't retaliate due to fear of being eliminated by a totalitarian regime, such as the Nazis.
In late 1944, as the war seemed close to an end, a group of Sonderkommando revolted in a short-lived mutiny that ended with the explosion of one of the crematoria and the murder of most of the conspirators. Many members of the units felt the urgent need to spread the word about what they had witnessed
We finally reach a point where time is being focused on, the revolt was most likely inspired by the atrocities that the Jews witnessed and the end of the war in sight.
Many were even forced to dispose of the bodies of their own loved ones.
Pathos appeal
The duties of Sonderkommando varied, but all entailed helping the Nazis move along their extermination of Jews. Nazis did the actual killing, dropping Zyklon B pellets into gas chambers, but the Sonderkommando were forced to do nearly everything else. They helped maintain order among prisoners who were about to be killed, lying and telling them that they needed to take showers before rejoining their families. They removed the naked bodies from the gas chamber, picked them over for gold teeth and hidden valuables, and cut their hair off to sell to German companies to be used for cloth, ammunition packaging and other purposes. They sorted the clothing and personal effects they had left behind. They carried the bodies to the crematoria and stuffed them into the ovens. Then they ground the remaining bones and took the ashes to various dumping sites to hide the evidence.
Two important points here.
This subverts our knowledge and expectations tied to the history of Auschwitz. We often think of the Nazis as the only hand in the act of terror that had occurred in that time. This shows us that there is always another layer of involvement and how those who have not been recognized are effected by the situation.
Notice that the specificity and manipulation of time isn't so prevalent in this text so far. Detailing the event and those involved is the main focus.
Even at the height of the Holocaust, the work of the Sonderkommando was shrouded in mystery and performed under threat of death. Since the people brought to the gas chambers were all murdered, the Sonderkommando were the only witnesses who survived. And since they knew the Nazis’ secrets firsthand, their lives at Auschwitz were marked by fear and isolation.
A prime example of how history and the relative truth associated with it are altered by those who are in power.
written by Marcel Nadjary, a Jewish man from Greece who had been enslaved with about 2,000 others and forced to help the Nazis as they operated their grimly efficient killing machines.
An unlikely perspective is being shown here, typically we don't think of Jews playing a role in killing other Jews, regardless of their willingness to do so.
Lesław Dyrcz leaned over a pile of rubble and dirt, completely unaware that he was about to make a discovery that would shed light on one of history’s darkest moments. It was 1980, and the forestry student was working to help restore the original forest around what was once Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the Nazis’ most notorious death camps. Dyrcz was there to help mitigate the effects decades of air pollution had on the forest, attempting to let its original pine trees grow once more. But the student was about to change history.
Story begins with an outside perspective.
I am an Protestant Christian. And I believe it was God's will that I was just a guard. And not in a firing squad.
A possible use of religion to protect his morality.
What did you think about when you were up there?
Take note that these type of questions are asked often, the interviewer is constantly trying to give the reader a look into the mind of Jakob and his mentality.
In addition to his wife, he also invited his neighbor to be present during the interview. He wants to show that he has no secrets, and never did.
While this is a use of other perspectives they may be very biased towards Jabok because of their connections to him.
SPIEGEL: When did you first hear about the gas chambers? W.: When you see that so many trains are coming, people arriving, then nobody can say anything. Everyone knew about it. SPIEGEL: Were you ever inside a gas chamber? W.: Just once. It was with a surveyor team. I was charged with guarding them. That was in 1943 or 1944. SPIEGEL: How big was the chamber? W.: Maybe as big as my entire house, which is 90 square meters (970 square feet). I mean, when one of the trains arrived, with 200 or 300 people, then they, if there were too many, had to wait outside. SPIEGEL: You could see that from above? W.: They had to wait in front of the gas chamber for an hour. And then they were led inside. They also heard the screams, but they, the SS people, the … I mean, that's how it was. That's how it … happened. SPIEGEL: What was going through your mind when you were standing with the surveyors in the gas chamber? W.: You can imagine it must have been a big room. It was pretty much a concrete bunker. There were pipes on the outside; I don't know any more if there were four or six. Then they threw a can inside. SPIEGEL: You saw SS troops throwing Zyklon B in from the outside? W.: Yes, of course. Standing on the tower, you could see them coming. It was always a vehicle with two men inside. And then they drove directly there and did a little operation and then you knew: That is the death squad.
Take note that the "look" that the reader gets through Jakob's perspective is quite limited and deliberate due to specific questions and the passage being dictated by an interviewer.
A retired civil servant with a degree in architecture, W. has lived here for more than 30 years. Wearing jeans, a plaid shirt and black leather shoes, he settles in the living room on a black leather couch, covered in a wool blanket. The room is crammed with carpets; an oak china cabinet overflows with knick-knacks. Above the sofa is an oil painting of a mountain lake at sunrise.
This section reveals aspects of his current character as well as trying to establish normally, an attempt to separate him from his dark past.
In the summer of 1942, the young man from a village near Belgrade received his draft notice. Just a few months later, he was standing on a tower hundreds of kilometers away from his home in Yugoslavia. Jakob W. was now an SS guard in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp -- and thus a party in the most horrific of the crimes committed by the Third Reich. For two and a half years, he looked down at the factory of human annihilation, day in and day out.
Another compression of time, yet it seems that the essentials of this lens are presented.
Comment if (typeof ADI != 'undefined') ADI.writeAdScript('integrationteaser_1'); Jakob W. was 19-years-old and in his third semester studying architecture at college when he received the letter that would, seven decades later, turn him into a suspect for complicity in murder.
A common technique used in writing; distorting time in order hook the reader by promising things to come later in the timeline.
In the spring of 1945,
Another time jump into the writer's essential point. Much time has been skipped over.
It leaves me curious as to what happened in between these points, I'll have to search for another perspective.
According to professor Wendy A. Sarti’s research
Where exactly does Sarti's research stem from?
In her memoir Five Chimneys, Auschwitz survivor Olga Lengyel writes that Grese had many affairs with other Nazis, including Mengele. When it came time to select women for the gas chamber, Lengyel noted that Irma Grese would purposely pick out the beautiful female prisoners due to jealousy and spite.
A very intriguing use of "outside perspective".
With so much authority, Irma Grese could unleash a torrent of lethal sadism upon her prisoners. Though it’s hard to verify the details of Grese’s abuses — and scholars, like Wendy Lower, point out that a lot what has been written about female Nazis is clouded by sexism and stereotypes — there is little doubt that Grese deserves her nickname, “the Hyena of Auschwitz.”
Possible speculation and "fudging" of the facts due to bias lenses such as sexism.
Also the sadistic use of power is reinforced by Irma's backstory, how she was powerless.
One year later, in 1943,
Here is an example of how time may be distorted in creative non fiction, the reader is being thrust forward to what the writer has deemed an essential point in the timeline.
Born in the fall of 1923, Irma Grese was one of the five children. According to trial transcripts, 13 years after Grese’s birth, her mother committed suicide upon discovering that her husband was cheating on her with a local pub owner’s daughter. Throughout her childhood, there were more problems for Grese, including some in school. One of Grese’s sisters, Helene, testified that Grese was bullied badly and lacked the courage to stand up for herself. Unable to tolerate the torment of school, Grese dropped out when she was just a young teen.
Here the promise of facts behind the facts is answered, here we see Irma's brief history that may explain why she is sadistic.
“the most notorious of the female Nazi war criminals”
Going back to the statement of importance this quotes stands as a quite dark ethos appeal.
rom the deranged Dr. Josef Mengele to the cruel propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, the names of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi henchmen — and henchwomen — have become synonymous with evil.
A comparison between other characters of significance is done to show the importance and impact of Irma.
How Irma Grese went from being a troubled teen to becoming one of the most sadistic guards to ever work inside a Nazi concentration camp.
Notice that context is given in the beginning of the text. A small glimpse into the facts behind the facts, if you will. This information is vital to understanding Irma's current position within the narrative.
* Change the way you use time. Squeeze a lifetime into 60 seconds, or stretch 60 seconds into a day. Start your autobiography a year before you were born, or 2000 years before. But remember, reflection doesn’t always mean looking BACK. Try driving the time engine in a different direction. As the Queen in ALICE IN WONDERLAND said, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” Employ flashforward as well as flashback. * Change the distance at which you are standing, in actual or psychic space. If enough time has not yet elapsed to give you distance on your subject, take the winemaker’s advice and serve no story before its time. But if you’ve waited too long, if the experience has cooled so much that it no longer matters to you, find a way to bring it emotionally closer. * Apply a different light, especially if you are a character in your own story. It’s hard to see all sides of yourself when looking in a mirror—and thank God for small favors. But try shining the same light on yourself as you have on the other characters. On the other hand, if you’ve been too hard on yourself, lighten up. We’re all just characters in this drama, this photograph, this memory. The one reflected on the water. The one that, try as we might, we can never recapture but we can nevertheless transform.
This text is a synthesis of all ideas presented in the last section
Experiment with the way in which you frame an event in your creative nonfiction piece. When experimenting think of every which way you might go about framing an event in terms of focus, use of time and tone. Attempt taking a different course of action in this process than you usually would.
Subvert your own formats and patterns of writing.
When we reflect, we in effect break an experience into pieces then reassemble the pieces into a new form.
Reassembling a memory in a manner that is unfamiliar to us (or from a perspective that is not our own) may be helpful.
When a student comes to me, as students often do, complaining that she has failed to “capture” her mother on paper, I tell her that of course she hasn’t. Capturing is impossible. Your mother, I explain, is made of blood and flesh and hair; your writing is made of words. I mean this to be comforting, and I explain why. Once we release the notion that we can capture our mother on paper, we are free to do what we can do: describe the strapless gown she wore that summer night, narrate the tale of her birth, circle round and round the questions our mind is asking.
No matter how great your efforts are to remain completely accurate to the real world, you never will when you partake in the act of analysis, remembering and writing creative nonfiction. Key word here, “re”. Remember, reshape, rehash, whenever this word is involved it implies change. The act of remembering an event and reciting it is no different than reassembling a car. Once taken apart your view of it will forever change.
So one of the most helpful things we can do as writers is to relinquish early on the notion that we can capture reality.
As writers, we must relinquish the notion of capturing reality. Once we have done this, we may proceed to fill in the minor blanks in our stories.
Perhapsing plays a pivotal role in these situations.
Reflections require a reflective surface, some other medium to bounce off of. And that surface affects the image that is formed. The clouds “frelected” in the Central Park lake create very different images depending on whether the lake is still, softly rippling, or turbulently roiling. As writers, our reflective surfaces are our words. But what kind of surface will we use? Lyric? Dramatic? Narrative? Segmented? Will we try to depict reality as smoothly and realistically as possible? Or will we consciously break up the reality, rough up the surface so that the reflection becomes distorted or diffuse?
Any process of reflection requires a medium to reflect upon, the result of this reflection is influenced by the medium itself, choosing a medium should be a very deliberate process.
The medium in which you choose should be in connection to the type of story you are telling.
I interviewed the fire fighters, the boy who had saved his girlfriend, the girlfriend herself, the guidance counselor, and other witnesses. I got the license number of the car, wrote down its make a model and described the damage. I noted the shadow of the gym slanting across the tarmac, the temperature and clouds and the size of the crowd. My notes were copious and thorough, much longer than the story I would write.
In any story you’re never truly at the root, you can always dig deeper.
As a writer you must be deliberate about how far you dig, you can't dig forever so you must determine when you've reached an essential point, something I call "The point of necessity."
As seen later in the text the reporter glosses over certain areas of the story that he shouldn't have, he hadn't reached his point of necessity.
Memory can be warped, it lies, it tells us what we want to hear. So part of this essay is a call to work beyond personal knowledge and thus beyond memory, to test that memory against other evidence in the world
Creative non-fiction must strike a balance between memory and solid evidence. Usually relying more heavily on evidence opposed to memory.
I feel that this is most applicable to memoir but this rule can be applied to any form of creative non fiction as a disciplinary action in writing.
she interviewed her father, other family members, former teachers, the neighbor woman who used to babysit her after school.
Here we have a prime example of unlikely perspectives. Whenever we think of family conflicts we tend to think solely of the family, usually we wouldn't think of a teacher when looking for insight. The key idea and term here is "outside perspectives".
We are currently fighting an intractable war partly because a well-respected journalist for the national newspaper of record reported a selected series of facts, all of them perhaps true individually, but all of them together leading toward a false story,
Selected individual truths may possibly result in an a false story when all of these individual truths are strung together. Key word, SELECTED. When looking through previously set lenses of a story we must question who the lenses was set by and why?
I had forgotten a fundamental truth about stories—or maybe I hadn’t yet learned it: Backstory drives present action.
Whenever you begin writing about an event or something that has occurred within the real world you must take into account that the story itself hasn’t begun when YOU (the writer) has stepped into the picture.
The media reports the trivial facts of celebrities’ lives and so many more important facts simply go unreported in our world
When searching for evidence avoid focusing solely on mainstream history, focusing only on the famous is like focusing only on the tip of an iceberg.
Think of those who have often been glossed over throughout history.
Search in unlikely areas. A challenge I propose is to avoid researching from perspectives that we habitually favor.