The Shawl
The Shawl is a breathtaking story. Cynthia Ozick was not an actual witness of the Holocaust but she read many stories about it and thru her gift of using images, similes, metaphors, and symbols has help the reader to visualize and experience events and emotions contain within the story. She believes that figurative language is critical to understand literature and she uses them masterfully throughout The Shawl.
The story is short and the sentences are narrative and descriptive, using many metaphors in orders to humanize and dehumanize her three main characters, Magda, Rosa and Stella. What makes the story so powerful and emotional is the language that the author uses, she sends strong emotions, and makes the reader understand how much pain and suffering they are going thru in order to fight for their lives and stay away from the Nazi soldiers.
Ozick uses the figurative language to describe something. For instance, when Rosa found the shawl after they have lost it the author mention, “Magda was high up, elevated, riding someone’s shoulder” (p. 933). She describes the feelings of Magda thru metaphor and similes emphasizing how important is founding the shawl. The shawl is a conventional symbolism that protects Magda and keeps her quit. The author sends the message that no matter how hard they tried to protect Madga from the Nazi they would still found them and eventually kill Magda.
Also the writer describes how the Nazi would kill anybody without caring about age or gender. She states “ Above the shoulder a helmet glinted. Below the helmet a black body like a domino and a pair of black boots hurled themselves in the direction of the electrified fence” (p.933). Without mentioning the work Nazi the reader knows what the author is talking about because of the description that she is using.
The shawl seems to be more than just a simple fiber that holds them all together, happy to a certain extent is also a security blanket. The writer describes it as being “It
The story is short and the sentences are narrative and descriptive, using many metaphors in orders to humanize and dehumanize her three main characters, Magda, Rosa and Stella. What makes the story so powerful and emotional is the language that the author uses, she sends strong emotions, and makes the reader understand how much pain and suffering they are going thru in order to fight for their lives and stay away from the Nazi soldiers.
Ozick uses the figurative language to describe something. For instance, when Rosa found the shawl after they have lost it the author mention, “Magda was high up, elevated, riding someone’s shoulder” (p. 933). She describes the feelings of Magda thru metaphor and similes emphasizing how important is founding the shawl. The shawl is a conventional symbolism that protects Magda and keeps her quit. The author sends the message that no matter how hard they tried to protect Madga from the Nazi they would still found them and eventually kill Magda.
Also the writer describes how the Nazi would kill anybody without caring about age or gender. She states “ Above the shoulder a helmet glinted. Below the helmet a black body like a domino and a pair of black boots hurled themselves in the direction of the electrified fence” (p.933). Without mentioning the work Nazi the reader knows what the author is talking about because of the description that she is using.
The shawl seems to be more than just a simple fiber that holds them all together, happy to a certain extent is also a security blanket. The writer describes it as being “It