In my two posts regarding ‘The Shawl,’ I have picked much of this story apart from beginning to end, made some inferences, and drawn some conclusions, now I’d like to see what others have to say and respond. I’d like to take a look at some of the stuff ‘Runesmith,’ whose blog ‘Give me your skin…” I tend to read and follow; I am rather a fan of it, not to mention based on the style and tone I can easily pin-point precisely whom it is written by. I have worked with this individual in our in-class group activities and I enjoy what he/she has to say.

“The Shawl is less a story and more an indictment.” Indictment! Runesmith begins. What a perfect term. This book has indictment written all over it; and it should, as it goes to show that there were those directly affected who suffered death immediately or shortly thereafter at the hands of the Nazis, and then there were those who supposedly ‘survived’ but may never escape its haunting memories because of a lingering and consuming ripple effect; possibly stemming to a wide array of people (friends, family, descendants, ancestors etc.). The magnitude of the terror spread by the Nazis is actually much worse than imagined; in addition to the death toll, we must add people like Rosa and Stella, who also lost their lives, but in different ways. So take how bad we deem it was and add an exponent of two. As part of this indictment, Runesmith includes the quote:

“To never forget to remember "my Warsaw is not your Warsaw." It's an indictment against Europeans…”

I have to disagree with the purpose of this statement. I don’t think Rosa is accusingly pointing the finger at everyone who fled before the terror and roundup, indicting Europeans for fleeing instead of fighting; even though that’s precisely what many did, this statement is important in other ways. Instead, here she ruminates and wallows in her loss, reminiscing of a time and place where life was perfect; where her family was cultured, bookshelves laden with thousands of books (“Polish, German, French her father’s Latin books; the shelf of shy literary periodicals her mother’s poetry…”) and lived in a refined, educated, and cultivated aristocratic lifestyle.

“The Warsaw of her childhood: a great light: she switched it on, she wanted to live inside her eyes….Cultivation, old civilization, beauty, history!” She glorifies Warsaw to a great extent, “Whoever speaks of Paris has never seen Warsaw…Whoever yearns for an aristocratic sensibility, let him switch on the great light of Warsaw.” Her Warsaw is blissful and the pure and unadulterated utopia of her childhood, before it was ruined and ‘stolen by thieves,’ getting back to the indictment. She was the perfect embodiment (a future Marie Curie even!) of holy Warsaw and “Americans couldn’t tell her apart from this fellow (Persky) with his false teeth and his dewlaps and his rakehell reddish toupee bought God knows when or where…” Preposterous! Ignorant Americans! (However ignorant, my history tells me that we saved the day). They may know “good material,” “she saw them walking with Tolstoy under their arms, with Dostoyevsky,” but it’s all phony, fraudulent; she was the real deal.

“The Shawl isn't so much a shawl as it is a symbol. To Ozick, the inactive Germans might as well have been Nazis themselves.” This idea is very insightful and Runesmith does an excellent job in elaborating on the indictment and implications of any and all Europeans who remained inactive while an entire race of people were persecuted. Just like Rosa’s Warsaw and the profound loss it represents for her, I believe the shawl is also important for other reasons. I think back to the “shawl” chapter, about the delirium and hysteria that dictated their thoughts, actions, and feelings, and I think I can come to the conclusion that the two most powerful and intense things they are suffering from are hunger and cold.  What I believe the shawl does, and why I believe Rosa sees it as being ‘magic,’ is that it brings warmth and comfort, a feeling they no longer know. This minuscule amount of warmth and comfort from a simple shawl or blanket is magnified to great levels having been non-existent for so long, then mixed with the hysteria and madness that has swept them up it is probably easy for Rosa to really believe its magic power has kept Magda alive. This is why Stella steals it: “I was cold.”

On a side note: I am unable to include this in my post, but I have seen that no one is spared from Rosa’s contempt, even her own people. It’s odd because she carries a strange contempt for Jews. That they are….“her father, like her, mocked at Yiddish; there was not a particle of ghetto left in him, not a grain of rot.” She appears to possess a hatred for Jews even, and a feeling that they are dirty, unclean, impure, subhuman. This is rather peculiar. I will think more into it...