SENSE OF LOST IN THE SHAWL BY CYNTHIA OZICK

Abstract

Human beings have always been in a battle of treasure, religion and land for the sake of power and there happen a lot of massacres all over the world. One of these dreadful massacres is the Holocaust which is one of the most discreditable events in the history of mankind. This event has remained severe and long term effects. A huge number of Jewish people immigrate to America and there have been written numerous works on the worst moments of Jewish people's lives. One of these representative stories of the Holocaust is The Shawl written by Cynthia Ozick. Despite of the fact that she has not undergone the Holocaust, she makes the reader feel the clamors of the fictional victims. The main character has surrounded by grieves of the death of her daughter which cause a despair and loss throughout her life. This essay will discuss the loss idea in a woman's existence, which is a consequence of the Holocaust, in The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick. After brief information on the American Jewish Fiction and the Holocaust is given, the loss idea in Rosa's being will be illustrated with the examples from the book.

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SENSE OF LOST IN THE SHAWL BY CYNTHIA OZICK
Bülent Cercis TANRITANIR
Prof. Dr., Van Yüzüncü Yıl University, Faculty of Letters, Departmen of English Language and Literature
Soran Abubakr ABDULRAHMAN
Graduate of Van Yüzüncü Yıl University, School of Social Sciences, Tishk International University,Erbil Iraq
ABSTRACT
Human beings have always been in a battle of treasure, religion and land for the sake of power and there
happen a lot of massacres all over the world. One of these dreadful massacres is the Holocaust which is one of
the most discreditable events in the history of mankind. This event has remained severe and long term effects.
A huge number of Jewish people immigrate to America and there have been written numerous works on the
worst moments of Jewish people’s lives. One of these representative stories of the Holocaust is The Shawl
written by Cynthia Ozick. Despite of the fact that she has not undergone the Holocaust, she makes the reader
feel the clamors of the fictional victims. The main character has surrounded by grieves of the death of her
daughter which cause a despair and loss throughout her life. This essay will discuss the loss idea in a woman’s
existence, which is a consequence of the Holocaust, in The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick. After brief information
on the American Jewish Fiction and the Holocaust is given, the loss idea in Rosa’s being will be illustrated
with the examples from the book.
Keywords: American Jewish Fiction, The Holocaust, Jewish people, the loss idea
INTRODUCTION
At first, in eighties, Holocaust as a writing subject has aroused the academics’ great interest. Furthermore, it
became a subject for the movies, documentaries and narrations while it is tried to be disproved by the
supporters of Nazi Germany (Libowitz 271). A kind of movement gain importance among the minor groups
from different ethnic background living in America in sixties and Jewish fiction is a production of this
movement (Libowitz 279). After European Jewry is destroyed, Jewish narration has undergone hard times in
America also (Berger 226). American Jewish fiction has come out as a kind of reaction against American
values because they have been in an in-between situation in the cultural level. The desires of Jewish people
and the wishes of American culture haven’t compensated each other. Nearly fifty years ago, in seventies Jewish
Fiction appears in America and it has been developed by some authors like Arthur A. Cohen, Hugh Nissenson
and Cynthia Ozick. Indeed, these writers handle the existentialist problems of Jewish people and especially in
the eighties Jewish fiction writers have used stereotypical characters and stories belong those days (Berger
221). These writers are in a search and construction of Jewish identity through their works. A great number of
novels beside fictional and non-fictional works have been written to domesticate the Holocaust (Berger 226).
All of them describe and represent the sorrows of the victims and the sensitiveness of Jewish society as Berger
claims that “… each novel presents distinctive second generation icons of Holocaust remembrance: yahrzeit
candles, photos of murdered half- siblings or other relatives, and an unsuitable desire to read about the
Holocaust and/or make pilgrimages to the cites of death camps.” (230). On the contrary, the generations
coming after second one have lost the significance of the incident happened in the dusty pages of the history
(Libowitz 281). As a member of the second generation, Cynthia Ozick has written a number of significant
narratives on the Holocaust in eighties and one of them is The Shawl in which the main character has
surrounded by grieves of the death of her daughter which cause a despair and loss throughout her life. The
only aim of Cynthia Ozick is to improve Jewish fiction, therefore; she is against the exaggerative usage of
Holocaust issue in Jewish Fiction as if it is the only representation of their culture (Kauvar and Ozick 393). In
addition to that she tries to keep Jewish culture on its feet in the modern literature through her writings in
which she puts forward the reality of Jewish people, Jewish religion and Jewish life style (Powers 95). Despite
of the fact that she has not undergone the Holocaust, she makes the reader feel the clamors of the fictional
victims and she examines the Jewish culture in detail in her works. This essay, at first, will give brief

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information on the biography of Cynthia Ozick and her narration; then, will provide a discussion on the loss
idea in Rosa’s being illustrated with the examples from the book.
Cynthia Ozick and Her Narration
Ozick was born in an immigrant family who try to live their own culture and maintain their language in a
totally different culture in America (Walden 886). She is outraged not only by her classmates but also by her
teachers. This humiliation against her ancestors makes her write on Jewishness and she start to search about
“what it is to think as a Jew.” (Walden 886). She begins to her career writing on religious issues as a Jewish
writer living in America beside that she has many novels and collections which consist of short stories (Berger
223). In addition to that she is a challenging Jewish writer (Burstein 85) as it can be understood from her
speech “To be a Jew is an act of the strenuous mind as it stands before the fakeries and lying seductions of the
world, saying no and no again as they parade by in all their allure And to be a writer is to plunge into the parade
and become one of the delirious marchers.” (Kauvar and Ozick 358). It can be interpreted from this quotation
that she is aware of the facts of Jewish society and tries to reflect these truths in her writings. Moreover, she
considers this awareness as a national duty against her nation as a Jewish American writer. Equally important
is that Strandberg reports Cynthia Ozick writes so detailed narration that hypnotizes the reader (199). It can be
inferred that Ozick’s narration makes reader feel the same emotions with Holocaust victims. Indeed, Rosenberg
states that her writing is a kind of social criticism in which the reader learns from the sorrows of the characters
(43). This means the social analysis and criticism handled in her works provide a documentary novel. Another
essential point is that in one of her interview she restates “… we are the generations that come after. I want the
documents to be enough; I don’t want to tamper or invent or imagine. And yet I have done it. I can’t not do it.
It comes, it invades.” (qtd. in Berger 227). This depicts that she is regretful because of the creation of her works
on Holocaust but she couldn’t help herself and her creative impulse as a Jewish who is brought up by a family
has been witness to Holocaust. One of her narrations she has written on the Holocaust issue is The Shawl which
is published in 1980 in The New Yorker. Then, it is published in 1989 as a book which consists of two short
stories; “The Shawl” and “Rosa”. Both of these short stories tell about the life of Rosa Dublin before, during
and after the Holocaust (Berger 227). This is the same process experienced by all the survivors of this
discreditable event in Germany and it also affects the second generation because they are brought up by the
victims of Holocaust. In fact, Berger defends that Holocaust caused a dual effect on Jewish people and German
nation (231) also Powers states that they could not forget the past (82). Actually, the period in which Rosa
lives in America gives the clues of American people’s prejudices and uninterested manners against Jewish
people and the results of these behaviors on the damaged psychology of Jewish people (Berger 228). Though
The Shawl is an imaginary story, this fictional work illustrates a very realistic picture of those times. As a
matter of fact, Ozick is against fictional writing on Holocaust because she thinks that only a witness can talk
on this issue or if there will be written a text on these times only a witness need to write. On the other hand,
she could not help herself writing a totally fictitious text, The Shawl (Kauvar and Ozick 391).
Sense of Lost in The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
In The Shawl, the sorrows of Rosa Dublin, who is a survivor of Holocaust, are narrated through; her memories,
yearning for her death daughter, hate against her niece Stella and her shadowed present and future life by her
dark memories. Ozick’s descriptions of the character illustrate the unbearable life conditions of Nazi Germany;
for instance, fourteen years old child Stella’s knees are depicted as “tumors on sticks” (Ozick 3) and her elbows
as “chicken bones” (Ozick 3). At the beginning of the story, Rosa accuses Stella of being jealous of her baby
Magda and calls her as ravenous. This cannibalism idea can be associated with the starvation which has come
out as a consequence of camps in which %62 of men has died because of starvation (Eckardt 5). Regrettably,
Rosa has witnessed her daughter’s death on the electric fence after Stella steals Magda’s shawl and Rosa
regrets not to be able to protect her daughter even reach and take her daughter’s death body on the fence (Ozick
10). This death makes Rosa’s life miserable and then she not only lost her daughter but also her hope, her
reason of life, her mental health and her social relationships. After immigrating to America, she has begun to
live alone in a hotel room and she is called as “a madwoman and a scavenger” (Ozick 13) in the book. It is
stated that Rosa and Stella corresponds and in the letters Rosa applies to Polish from time to time while her
niece has lost her language (Ozick 14) in another country which is the best place for Stella to live as a Jew in
those times. Actually, Rosa struggles to cling her culture and language as it is understood from her words
“Why should I learn English? I didn’t ask for it, I got nothing to do with.”(Ozick 23). This statement shows
the challenging Jewish character and her faithfulness to her own nation and identity. Even though Stella has

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helped Rosa in her expenses and her rent money, Rose cannot forget fifty years old Stella’s evil deed that she
is the main cause behind her little Magda’s death. According to the results of surveys, it is reported that Jewish
women try to escape from and hide their Jewish identity (Eckardt 3). In fact, Rosa is in Florida she is still
afraid of Nazis (Ozick 21) and she does not want to have any kind of conversations on her past in America.
This fear shows that Rosa loses her belief in humankind who always chase for money, land and power. When
she has met Persky, a Jewish American citizen, she introduces herself as a chemist and she claims that she has
been a well-educated woman from an educated family (Ozick 21). However, she has not been a chemist in her
past but she loses her own past except the existence of Magda. More importantly, she has an obsessive
relationship with the death of her daughter and her shawl which is the only thing remains from her daughter.
One day her niece sends her a box, in which there is Magda’s shawl, and she tidies her room before opening
the box. Moreover, she loses her belief in the justice in the new world also and represents her ideas in these
sentences “She thieves all the truth, she robs it, she steals it, the robbery goes unpunished” (Ozick 43). As it is
understood it is a kind of complain against the passive voice of the world countries when Holocaust has been
done and it can be claimed that Stella is the representative figure stands for the new world. Furthermore, she
loses her underpants after meeting a Jewish man Persky in the launderette and she cannot find it (Ozick 48)
just like her life before everything Hitler did. In the fact that her losing her underwear can be accepted as a
symbol of the loss of woman’s honor who is the sexually abused member of Nazi Germany. To elaborate, in
one of her dialogue with Persky, Rosa says “My niece Stella says that in America cats have nine lives, but we-
we are less than cats, so we got three. The life before, the life during, the life after.” Then, Rosa goes own with
her own ideas “The life after is now. The life before is our real life, at home, where we was born.” When
Persky asks about the during part of their life, she responses as “This was Hitler.” (Ozick 57-58). As it is
discussed by Rosa, Jewish people’s life consists of three stages and the most troublous stage is the during in
which they have to watch the deaths of their beloved ones. This conveys that the during stage collapses Jews’
lives and engraves that they cannot feel the joy of life again. Even though Stella offers Rosa a new life with
her, she does not accept (Ozick 64) because she has lost her joy of life and she cannot find any meaning in life.
Beside that she sacralizes her daughter Magda’s death with these words “My Gold, my Wealth, my Treasure,
my Hidden Sesame, my Paradise, my Yellow Flower, my Magda! Queen of Bloom and Blossom!” (Ozick 66).
There is another significant statement in which Rosa pays her daughter compliments in these sentence “Magda,
my beloved, don’t be ashamed of your presence: only come to me, come to me again, if no longer now, then
later, always come.” (Ozick 69). It can be interpreted from these quotations that she loses her mental health as
a result of the loss her daughter and her peaceful life before Holocaust. Further, it is clear that Rosa has lost
her relationship with the present and future and combines the past and present. This obsession captures her;
therefore, she cannot begin a new life, a new relationship with a man and she cannot feel the amenities of life
as a middle aged woman. In fact, these are the traumatic effects of the past and the consequences of this trauma
in the present. It can be said that Holocaust remains deep wounds not only in the heart but also in the memory
of Jewish people. As a final point in the loss idea, it can be claimed that Rosa loses her communication skills
and she tries to find her own self in her deep sides. To illustrate this claim a passage in The Shawl can be given
that in her hotel room, while talking to Stella on the phone, suddenly
[…] Rosa took the shawl and put it over the knob of the receiver: it was like a little doll’s head then. She kissed
it, right over Stella’s admonitions. ‘Good-Bye,’ she told Stella, and didn’t care what it had cost. The whole
room was full of Magda: she was like a butterfly, in this corner and in that corner, all at once. Rosa waited to
see what age Magda was going to be: how nice, a girl of sixteen; girls in their bloom move so swiftly that their
blouses and skirts balloon; they are always butterflies at sixteen. There was Magda, all in flower. […] (Ozick
64)
It is obvious that Rosa creates an imaginary world for herself and her daughter. Using the knob of the receiver
as a figure for Magda’s body demonstrates the miserable reality that Rosa loses her relation with the real world
and she gets lost in the chaos of the past and present.

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CONCLUSION
To conclude, it is obvious that the inefficacy of American literature in satisfying the expectations of Jewish
community living in America gives way to American Jewish literature. In particular, there are two main
problems tried to be solved by American Jewish authors which are the existentialist problems of Jewish people
and the construction of Jewish identity through literature. One of the products of this literature, The Shawl by
Cynthia Ozick which is a representative work with its narration reflecting all the sorrows of Jewish people at
the time of Hitler and after him. Further to this, the protagonist of the book and the representative figure of
Jews, Rosa loses everything she has before Holocaust and not only Rosa but also all the Jewish people lose
their homes, lives, honor, mental health, relatives and beloved ones, the meaning of life, their belief in the new
world and the survivors of Holocaust cannot gain again any of these losses. The agonizing end of the story can
be outlined that the traumatic effects of Holocaust turn them into living dead who are in the search of Jewish
identity, meaning and taste in the new world life. Actually, they cannot find what they are in the search of by
reason of the fact that they are trapped in the chaos of the past and present. Additionally, losing the
communication skills puts a barrier between Rosa and people who try to reach her and hinders her in all aspects
of life. The inescapable facts of Jewish society do not let them have a worth living present or a promising
future. On the other hand, this conclusion cannot be accepted as a pessimistic view because of the fact that in
the way of search there is always a gate opening to the self-identity.
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