Professor Sam Spinner German 59 Section 1C 2 6 13 Response Paper Fatelessness Passage 1 page 31 I boarded the streetcar with uncomfortable feelings for of course I am attached to my mother and naturally it bothered me that I could do nothing for her today That lousy feeling may perhaps have been the reason why I was none too eager to take leave of Mother It was she who insisted it would be late given that those with yellow stars are only permitted to show themselves on the street up to eight o clock But I explained to her that now that I have identification papers I no longer need to be so dreadfully punctilious about each and every regulation Passage 2 page 262 Everyone asks only about the hardships and the atrocities whereas for me perhaps it is the experience which will remain the most memorable Yes the next time I am asked I ought to speak about that of the happiness of the concentration camps Throughout the novel the narrator Gy rgy exudes a dismissive and detached tone about the Holocaust the events surrounding his childhood and his life as a Jew He makes the reader believe that he did not identify as a Jew but was not treated fully like a Hungarian Although his outlook changes and he becomes less na ve as the novel progresses he still ends with the thought that some good came out of the Holocaust That mentality can be found by many to be unusual considering the tragedies we have all read about in many memoirs and see in many documentaries Quote 1 is taken from the beginning of the novel and reflects a tone and attitude that leads the readers to believe that he does not identify with the Jewish culture and that he is above the rules the Nazi regime has laid out for the Jews being persecuted The narrator expresses his love for his mother but also shows a sense of detachment and disregard for his mother s authority Yet his tone reflects a trivial amount of remorse and conflict for which culture and set of rules to follow Ironically he describes boarding the street car as uncomfortable yet told his mother that there was need to worry about all the regulations when he had his identification papers His naivety is apparent in his disregard of what would happen to him if he were to break curfew Even though most Jews in that time period feared for their lives Gy rgy seems to have little to no fear of the Nazi regime and even felt as though they have given him special rights Quote 2 is from the very end of the novel as the author is reflecting on his time in the concentration camps His thoughts reveal no remorse or vengefulness for what he had to go through He has however acknowledged that many had suffered and gone through hardships showing that he has in some way become aware of the horror and therefore more mature However he completely juxtaposes those feelings by associating and using the word happiness when describing his sentiments about the concentration camps With this thought ending the novel it leads the reader to believe that he did not really go through the same hardships and the atrocities that his campmates had gone through In some way this makes the reader think of the narrator as an antagonist For those readers who are strongly emotionally connected to the Holocaust Gy rgy comes off as an elitist and demeaning bystander rather than a victim However to some such as those who are looking to move on he may appear to be an optimist one who can find good in any situation This is seen in his statement that the next time he is asked about his story he will only reflect on the joy he found and took away from his experience in the concentration camps The reader can view his deliberation on the Holocaust as either one of inexperience and foolishness or one of positivity These two passages exemplify the author s ambivalent attitude towards his situation Gy rgy is at first na ve and emotionally detached to what is going on around him Towards the end of the novel he becomes more aware of the devastation However he is still relatively unfazed admitting that he did not feel that his own experience was overly distressing In the end it is up to the reader to decipher Gy rgy s point of view on the Holocaust whether he was optimistic and hopeful or simply na ve and unaware