One step forward and two steps back

It always seems that when ever the world tries to go forward that someone always screws it up. The Germans are trying to get rid of all the tainted people like woman and children and men that where not of the Germans special race. Which consist of blond hair and blue eyes. They where also getting rid of anyone that was catholic or Jewish  In one part of the story it talks about how they hear a rabbi praying. “He has covered his head with a piece of rag torn off a blanket and reads from a Hebrew prayer book (there is no shortage of this type of literature at the camp), wailing loudly, monotonously.”(Borowski 696) One guy wanted to shut the man up but they decided that it was pointless he was fixing to die anyways. “Let him rave. They'll take him to the oven that much sooner.”(Borowski 697) It always amazed me that we had come so far since the 300 ab that it seems that we had gone back to when everyone were persecuting the Catholics  But the weird thing is that the Jews have been around forever. Its not just a random religion that has no point. The Germans make it seem like being anything but a “German” was wrong. I'm just glad we are out of that time and have moved forward since then. There will always be one person who will try to make us far back in the dark ages. But as long as we hold strong and keep in our faith then we to will overcome any trails that will be thrown in our path.

Terror in the 20th century

20th century literature is filled with realistic and historical events that shows the fight between humanity. The 20th century starts to change the way literature is written based on real life experiences and differences. War is a major theme to many literary works because so much war and conflicts were happening during the writer's time. Tadeusz Borowski writes his work from his own experiences, during the holocaust. His story of the concentration camps emphasizes the life and the people's behaviors in his short story, This Way For The Gas, Ladies And Gentlemen. This story gives great insight to the terror and disfunctional being of a debauched world, in order to become one whole empire, under the same belief and values. It was such a rapid and uncivilized change that it can such individualism to the world, as well as the way people looked at and to the world. It gave all humanity a reason to believe that the world is corrupt; it gave people the idea, whom had the most power, to fix and put into affect their own way to how the whole world of humanity should base their ways of life. The holocaust was such a destruction to the point that it gave the victims of the situation, a state of victimizing their own peer prisoners to whom they had an upper hand on. The victims started to hate and victimize other prisoners because of the ideas that were portrayed to be the only way, gave root to their own demoralizing of other prisoner's ways. Using Henri's feedback to his own statement, Borowski states, "Ah, on the contrary, it is natural, predictable, calculated. The ramp exhausts you, you rebel-and the easiest way to relieve your hate is to turn against someone weaker" (Borowski 702). His own exhaustion and hate for what has happened engraves his own mind to become the same evil to why he is a prisoner. The prisoners were stripped of everything to completely humiliate, demoralize, and dehumanize them into their deaths as uncivilized humans, incapable to living a truthful and their own way of life, so they start to believe. Describing the prisoner life, Henri states to Borowski, "Can't you see how uch easier life is becoming around here" (Borowski 696). They start to see the good in the camps and the way of the Germans, to believe in the good and see the bad around them from the different people in the prisons.

Desensitized...the devil's advocate

After reading Borowski's, "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen," I found it horrifying to re-live the desensitized ways of the Nazi's. Representing the 20th century literature very well...with the psychological issues of Hitler...class issues...the need of the Nazi's to make the world culturally homogenized-anyone who is a Jew must go! The genocidal way that Hitler used to dispose of Jews is almost unbearable to read. Borowski says, "...inhumanly crammed, buried under incredible heaps of luggage, suitcases, trunks, packages...Monstrously squeezed together, they have fainted from heat, suffocated, crushed one another" (Borowski 700). Even the way they brought them in on the trucks was in itself a death sentence. What exactly did it prove? Did it help the world become a better place? I really have never understood the reason behind Hitler's motives...which I guess is a good thing. It would be scary to think you are riding a bus to the destination of death. Watching daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters walk into a gas chamber with no choice of turning back. And such a systematic way of operating the mass murders...these to the left...these to the right...you catch the next bus to the chamber. Borowski tells us that "[a]ll day, thousands of naked me shuffle up and down the roads, cluster around the squares..." (Borowski 695). The guards just sit around and wait on the next load of moaning human faces to comes rolling in on the trucks: "...the trucks have arrived, steps are being drawn up, and the Canada men stand ready at their posts by the train doors" (Borowski 700). I believe in this example of 20th century literature, the word 'desensitized' truly sums up the nature of the guards...being as how most of them were healthy Jews used for their muscle and left later to die: "I feel no pity. I am not sorry they're going to the gas chamber" (Borowski 702). I feel that this writing from Borowski helps the reader understand the morbid reality of what these people went through and what a waste of humanity took place.

    

The Metamorphosis of Grete

A theme that we've seen many times in the works we've read is the journey that people take from innocence  to experience. Gregor's sister Grete, much like Victor Frankenstein or Gulliver, is a prime example of how a person's innocence is often sapped by the grave reality of their situation. She initially takes on the eerie task of caring for Gregor with a sideways optimism, as he later notes she "ultimately had perhaps taken on such a difficult task purely out of childish high spirits" (Kafka 226). Although she is repulsed by him, she is still able to imagine him as Gregor; imagination is often lost on adults, as we see his parents unable to view the bug in the other room as their son. This connection between them is foretelling of her journey; as Gregor was also an innocent person who was obligated through no fault of his own to work off his family's debt, so too is Grete an innocent dragged into a dutiful role. Although she has good intentions by feeding Gregor and moving the chair for him, I think that perhaps it finally dawned on her that not being able to look at Gregor was a symptom of the fact that she was having a harder and harder time seeing him as her brother. This building confrontation erupts when he comes out of his room and scares the household while she plays the violin. The contrast of the peace of the violin set against the following outburst, is indicative of the fragile peace they had been maintaining. She finally breaks down, and I believe she is finally honest with herself, as she laments, "I don't want to speak the name of my brother within the hearing of that monster, and so I will merely say: we have to try to get rid of it.We did as much as humanly possible to try and look after it and tolerate it" (Kafka 237). This moment of honesty is refreshing, as now the remaining human members of the family are able to coalesce and set about resolving their situation. As the family rides in the carriage after Gregor's death, the first mention of warm sunlight is made, and Grete's parents note that she has become a beautiful woman, indicative of the internal change that has taken place, and so as the story closes, she rises up and stretches her arms, much like the wings of a butterfly emerging from her cocoon.

Could you imagine what the world today would be like if it was back in the 20 century? Would it be the same or different? Think about it....if we did not have the people that helped make a change, will the world still be the same like it was before. The story This way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen has me thinking could we as people today survive what these people had to go through. "Babies, hideous naked women, men twisted by convulsions" (Borowski 705). At this point, your family is no longer a family. Your not in control anymore, your family is seperated and you do not know where each other is. You know longer have a normal life or the life you always known, watching your children grow up. Now your worries are, are they alive. There was only two things that the people asked for: Water and air (Wasser! Luft! 706). We are lucky enough, we can just go to the kitchen and turn on the sink and we have running clean water. And these people not only fighting to stay alive as long as they can but they just want water and air. That is why after reading this story and know what I know now about differnt things, I do not think if these events occured right now that we would not know what to do. We would be just like the poor innocent people that had their life changed at an instant.

The Cold Hard Facts

It seems to me that one of the main differences between literature in the twentieth century and other periods of literature is that stories from the twentieth century are more realistic and out there. They deal more with the "flat-out truth". In the stories we have read before there seemed to be some kind of deeper meaning or point to the story, whereas in This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski, there is no point or lesson to be learned. We are just given the cold hard facts about what is happening. One of the quotes that stood out to me the most is when the narrator talks about deceiving people about the gas chambers. "It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end. This is the only permissible form of charity (Borowski 700)." This quote moved me because it makes lying to all of these people about the gas chambers a moral thing in the perverse system that they got going. Reading this story made me think about all the things that I have that I take for granted. These people were tortured physically and mentally for no reason at all. I couldnt imagine having to witness some of the things that these people did. The other thing in the story that moved me the most is when they talk about having to unload corpses. "I go back inside the train; I carry out dead infants; I unload luggage. I touch corpses, but I cannot overcome the mounting, uncontrollable terror (Borowski 705)." Knowing that people have lived through things like this makes my life seem very fortunate and every time I read something about the Holocaust it reminds me that I am very lucky.

Death of the Innocent.................

In the short story, This Way for the Gas, Ladies, and Gentlemen written by Tadeusz Borowski, he wants his reader to visualize how the innocent suffered without much hope. His setting is placed during the Holocaust which took place between 1933- 1945, where the German’s killed millions of Jews including women and young children. You can imagine how horrible this place was. In the short story as you read you see a small glimpse of hope when the Red Cross van is mention. He replies, “A Red Cross van drives back and forth, incessantly: it transports the gas that will kill these people” (Borowski 701). Normally when you see a cross it symbolize hope and truth, but during this point it symbolizes death for the people who do not know because it carries the gas that will expire their life. The Jews are forced to endure this act because the people who could help did not know or just did not care. Women was afraid to claim their own children because they could not phantom the abuse and torture they endured. He replies, “Pick up your child woman: the child runs after her [screaming], ‘Mama, mama, don’t leave me: so you’re running from your child, [the woman was choked to death] and thrown onto the truck” (Borowski 704). The mother was killed because she did not want to see her child suffer. How many of us today will die so we will not  be a witness to the suffering of our children?