ESSAY CEMETERY

The narrator's father Enrique is born in 1920 to his parents Sima and Luis. They are peasants and live simply in the woods. His father is secretly Jewish but unlike his mother feels no real connection to Hebrew and Judaism. They pretend to be Catholic but simultaneously partook in Jewish traditions and this didn't draw attention because everyone around them had weird traditions. They avoided being baptized. They were not very religious and practiced it as a sort of default and the narrator feels they were more "secret assimilationists", wanting the easier life that being a Catholic in Cuba allowed. On the other hand, Sima's father Ytzak felt he was super Cuban and wished he could be openly Jewish and in Havana he was. Yitzak grew up in Santiago, a city. It had an international mix and though everyone pretended to be Catholic as in the countryside he saw people practicing other beliefs openly. As Jews had never been officially allowed in the Spanish Coloni

Themes ·        Practicing Judaism in secrecy ·        Pretending to be Christian ·        Peasantry ·        International urban life ·        Fear of persecution ·        Joy in open practice ·        Betrayal of son and kidnapping People and Places ·        Oriente ·        Luis ·        Sima ·        Enrique ·        Moishe Menach ·        Black women ·        Fidel ·        Havana ·        Santiago ·        Haiti Achy Obejas

The Shawl Rosa, her infant daughter Magda and her niece Stella are in a concentration camp. They are all starving and malnourished. Rosa no longer lactates and Magda has been sucking on it as a source of comfort and, it seems to Rosa, nutrition, and consequently it seems sacred and magical to Rosa. Stella takes the shawl away, upon which Magda walks out of the barracks where Rosa has hidden her, ostensibly looking for the shawl. Rosa deliberates whether to get Magda or the shawl first. She gets the shawl but a Nazi soldier notices Magda and hurls her against an electric fence. Rosa, fearing for her life, does not move. She "drank Magda's shawl until it dried". Cynthia Ozick

Themes ·        Hunger and malnourishment ·        Physical alteration ·        Hatred of Stella ·        Superstition regarding the shawl ·        Aryan appearance ·        Shawl as a source of comfort ·        Decrepitude ·        Rosa's hypocrisy toward Stella ·        Contempt toward old age ·        Superiority of Polish ·        Snobbery and elitism ·        Miami and old people equated with the concentration camps and Jews – but self deluded and voluntary ·        Chauvinism ·        Criticism of psychology ·        Criticism of American treatment of holocaust survivors ·        Criticism of American Jews ·        Gay hatred ·        Rosa's hatred against old world Jews ·         Snobbery and distinction between herself and Polish Yiddish speaking Jews who are not immersed in Polish culture ·        The past (represented by Magda and isolation) vs. the present (represented by the phone) Response ·         The phone see

Isaac Bashevis Singer Themes ·        Plentiful food ·        Funeral parlor like cafeteria ·        Experience doesn't change us ·        A happy holocaust survivor ·        Care with emotions ·        Loss of a sense of decency in the war ·        Loss of idealism ·        Afterlife ·        The long-lived effect of Hitler ·        The reparation policies doing more harm than good (just like The Shawl ·        The past haunts the present ·        Personal trauma leads to social trauma ·        Fame of writers ·        Loss of faith People and Places ·        Aaron ·        Poland ·        Esther ·        Esther's father ·        Toronto Response ·        A fantasy? ·        Kantian philosophy; regaining faith ·        This story is filled with philosophy ·        He seems to accept that Esther's vision and his vision are real.. that corpses

I Aaron, 60-70 year old writer and lecturer, in New York, often eats at a cafeteria where he meets people who speak Yiddish from Poland and other artist types and talks with them. He is extremely familiar with his neighborhood. He lived in Poland for 30 years and then in his neighborhood for the same amount of time. In the 1950s Esther joined the group who was a holocaust survivor. She was still happy and admired Aaron's work and this charmed him. Her father told him about life in Siberia. II Aaron had to leave for Israel and when he came back he couldn't find her. He goes to look for her in the cafeteria and find it has burned down. He can't be bothered to keep searching. Half a year later he goes to the library and finds her. She says she has been sick as has her father. She does not want an idiot husband or an uncouth husband. They discuss the afterlife; Aaron is optimistic whereas Esther is pessimistic. III The cafeterianiks came back. They keep talking

Because of the non-linear (flashback-filled) storytelling, I decided to summarize the plot using bullet points instead of conventional paragraphs. The tense of the bulleted sentences indicate the time of occurrence of the item - past or present. The order of the bullet points correspond to the sequence in which the actions appeared in the book. Numbers in parentheses (n) indicate page numbers. I can't tell the edition - the title page of Chapter 1 begins on page 9. ------ The book begins with an epigraph attributed to HITLER: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human" . One/The Sheik ·        Mala and Vladek don't get along ·        Vladek had two heart attacks ·        Art's mother is dead ·        Art asks Vladek to tell him Vladek's story ·        Vladek criticizes Art about the way he spends his time ·        Vladek was in the textile business ·        Vladek brags that he was good looking and a ladies' man before