“Oh, how I hurt for them. How I hurt for these alien heroes. For the futility of their heroism. How I hurt for the futility of it all. What is death about? What is life about?” -Elli, I Have Lived a Thousand Years chapter entitled “Alien Heros (Plaszow, July 1944)” p. 107
I think that this passage stuck out to me the most because it’s so deep. I think it’s deep because a girl who is about my age is asking about life and death and it’s true meaning. She’s asking about what really death is about since she just saw those “new” people get killed in the camp. And she’s asking what life is about since she is seeing that her life is slipping aways and it really isn’t life anymore. She said in one part in the book that she doesn’t know where the line of humanity is anymore. I think that’s what made her question what is life anymore. In my opinion I would think the same thing if I was going through the same things that she was going through. But why death? Why did she question about death? Was it because she was always scared that she was going to be the next to go? Or because she was constantly seeing other people being killed in the most brutal ways? At first I thought that Elli was saying that because she wanted to know if death was always going to be like that? Or maybe she thought that she was going to die like that? I’m not sure but to read that a girl about my age was thinking those types of questions surprised me.
I personally don’t have any connections with this passage. I guess the only connection that I can have, or think of, is the true meaning of something. Like the true meaning of something that you thought that you knew but you didn’t. I don’t really know how to explain it. How would you explain to someone that what they thought they knew so well isn’t what they know at all? Like if you tell a lie then another and another and another and so on and that continues for so long that other people think it’s the truth because they have been hearing these lies for so long but really it’s all a big lie. That made me think of Hitler and how he would make up all these lies about Jews and how they were evil so when he kept saying it over and over that everybody else believed him. Hitler made up so many lies that that when somebody tried telling the real truth nobody would believe them because they have heard all these lies over and over again that they say it’s the truth.
I think that this passage is very deep too as you said. It also seems like a good story. That is a very good question what is life about? It could be a lot of different things for different people. like for some people it could bad with a lot of troubles, pain, and obstacles. For others it could be more successful because they might be wealthy or have a loving and caring family, but like in the holocaust everyone there had a really hard life as we know. Maybe she questioned death because she could have been thinking about death or she was just wondering like she wondered about life, or how you said she could have been scared she was next. The passage makes you wonder as well what is life about and death? A way you could explain to someone would be tell them slowly or just straight up or not tell them so they could still have hope because hardly anyone in the holocaust had hope to survive but some did. I think that life could be anything you think of it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that this story is astonishing because a young girl about your age is thinking about death and if it is worth living. Hitler accomplished his goal by making most of the Jews suffer. It must be horrible as a kid to see people die the most brutal ways and worse when you understand you could be next. Hitler as well did a good job to tell his people that the Perfect Race was only worthy to live and the Jews in their country were a disgrace and they should have been rid off the world for good.
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