Woah, so many exciting pageviews since I post a link here on my facebook! 
this is kind of how I feel about it.
Except this is actually me 
.....lol sadness...
So anyways, I'm really proud of this essay I did, and I had better get an A+... A++. Yeah. Don't steal this, and enjoy!
for your brain
In my reading of
Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas,
Ladies and Gentlemen, there were two scenes that lingered in my mind long after
I finished reading. Not—as one may
suspect—scenes of particularly unique carnage, but scenes of beauty and
humanity. Borowski’s story is an
exploration into the deepest parts of human nature. The two scenes examined here serve as
illumination in that darkness. They
contrast with the inhuman cruelty of the death camp, and are ideals of
humanity.
“‘You mustn’t shoot, I’ll carry
them.’ A tall, grey-haired woman takes
the little corpses out of my hands and for an instant gazes straight into my
eyes.
‘My poor boy,’ she whispers and
smiles at me. Then she walks away,
staggering along the path.” (158)
Though it is only a few sentences, this tiny exchange is
incredibly powerful. For the reader, it
is like a little light shining through the horrible darkness that is the rest
of the piece. For the story, this is a
beacon of compassion that stands out so sharply and is made all the brighter by
the atrocity of the camp.
The grey-haired woman pities the narrator. She sees that he has lost a large part of
himself—his humanity. His ability to
feel compassion for another human is severely lacking. It wouldn’t be so extraordinary if she’d met
him on the streets somewhere, but the fact that she is compassionate towards a
worker of Auschwitz, who holds dead infants “like chickens”, who is a
perpetrator of her own inevitable murder, is inhuman—or rather, superhuman (157).
She is the embodiment of human compassion. She can rise above her horrible situation and
surroundings, to retain her humanity.
The grey-haired woman is the only one to step forward and carry the dead
children, so what she represents—the ability to still be human while under the
influence of the camp—is very rare as well.
Clearly, the vast majority of people under the influence
the camp have lost their compassion as well.
It is no surprise then, that the narrator has succumbed to this lack of
humanity, it’s expected, even. Why is
the compassion of the grey-haired woman so powerful?—because we do not expect
it.
The second moment of brilliance in
the story is when the narrator encounters “the girl” (160). Her part in the story is considerably longer
than the other woman’s, and that suggests that the narrator spent more time
thinking about her—he certainly spent more time describing her. She is
portrayed in slow motion with the narrator telling us her every move, like one
of the stereotypical love-at-first-sight movie scenes. She “suddenly…appears” and “descends
lightly…hops on to the gravel, looks around inquiringly”, throws her “soft,
blonde hair” back “runs her hands down her blouse” and “straightens her skirt”
(160). No other character in the story
is described this fully.
The narrator describes her with
words like “delicate”, “boldly”, “beautiful”, “enchanting”, “wise”, and
“mature”(160). Quite clearly, this girl,
though she is in physically in the narrator’s life only a few moments, she has
had a very strong impression on him. He
describes her with a tone very like adoration.
Just like the grey-haired woman
represents the compassion that the narrator has lost, this girl is the
embodiment of the honor and bravery that he no longer has. She speaks to him directly—without fear—despite
her very fearful situation. When he
makes no response, she asks him again, persisting. ‘Listen, tell me,’ she says, demanding of him
(160).
The girl makes the awful connection
herself, and decides her own fate. She
doesn’t doubt her guesses about her destination—she speaks with “proud
contempt” (160). Even when someone
directly presents her with the opportunity to continue living—albeit, only for
a short time—she refuses, choses to go to the gas chambers instead; she is in
control of herself.
This is another ideal of human
nature—the virtues of honor and integrity.
This girl will not allow herself to become one of the “dirty, damp
female bodies” of the concentration camp—she would rather die (160). When she is face to face with her own death—a
place where the majority of people would sacrifice their integrity without a
second thought—she does not give in.
If the narrator possessed this
quality, he would have refused to continue his job as soon as something went
afoul of his morals, instead of twisting or eliminating his morals so that he
could survive in Auschwitz. I think he
sees this remarkable quality in the girl, and that is why she has such a
lasting impact. That is why he speaks of
her so highly.
These two women contrast sharply
with the narrator because they are exemplary and he is not. They stand above the animalistic mass, and he
is part of it. Without these two scenes,
the story would simply be an account of a concentration camp. Without that contrast, it would be flat and
meaningless. Just like shadows in a
painting help support the lighted objects, so too do bits of light—of
illumination—help to expose the shadows.
The shadows here, of course, are the darker recesses of human nature—of
animal nature—that are thrust to the surface in the face of atrocity.
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