One day, Hannah opens a door and steps back in time to the world of her grandparents. Like them, she's transported to a Nazi concentration camp. It's a place of death and suffering, an absolute hell on earth. Yet outside, in the natural world, life goes on much as before. The seasons still turn, birds sing their sweet, melodious songs in the trees, and sunsets are ravishingly beautiful. Nature in all its incredible beauty forms an ironic contrast with the sheer ugliness, both moral and physical, inside the camp. In many stories, nature is used as a source of symbols to provide commentary on events and characters. In The Devil's Arithmetic, however, nature is utterly separate from the brutal human environment which Hannah finds herself inhabiting. Nature in its own way is as indifferent to the fate of Hannah and the other Jewish inmates as their Nazi oppressors.
No comments:
Post a Comment