Essay

Fatelessness has a message and it is something that Imre Kertesz did thought or considered when he was writing this novel as in the text we can see the criticism, the opinion behind the words that the author gives, reflected in the experience of Gyuri

The message that novel gives us is that all atrocities, the breaking of the human rights, the harm, the pain, etc., that is summarized in the Holocaust, must not happen again, we must learn from our mistakes. Imre when writing this novel, tried to clarify this message and make it effective by the use of examples of how people and families got affected by this (Gyuri and his family plus all the people that died in the story in the concentration camps), how unmoral humans beings can be as they keep harming people who were dying from thirst, hunger, diseases, or making kids work like animals.

2.-

The understanding of the points of view expressed in fatelessness may be hard or easy depending on many factors like the age of the readers, the level of knowledge of the readers about the theme, but mainly, it depends on the readers cultural background.

In terms of age, this affects a lot the understanding as the maturity of the readers may impact on their reasoning, for example a 10 year old kid would not get the real importance of the points of views expressed, he may not understand how difficult and tragic would be to live in a concentration camp as his mind is not prepared yet.

3.- Fatelessness has different narrative techniques that seduce and affect our minds, this can be seen in terms of the use of certain characters, strong words, etc. to impact the readers.

The use of certain characters like a child as the main character or protagonist, makes the whole story more tragic as its more painful for the readers to read how a child is suffering rather than to reading about how a man is suffering, all of these things including some important situations that happens in the story like how their father had to go to a labor camp and left the family alone, how he was forced to work and because of that he got captured, how he became even more alone as his friend with the glasses took another direction, also the infection he had in his knee and how he was bitten by the bugs; helps to seduce and affect our minds.


4.- The context is a key factor in the creation process of a story as the Holocaust and its atrocities have helped us understand Fatelessness much more.

Context, is one of the most important factors as it is like a "guide" for the authors when they write, because the context helps to define many things that are part in the stories, for example: the setting, the environment, the perspective, etc.

This can be seen in most of literature classes, as when we analyse some stories, one of the first aspects we search and look for is the historical background, as for example: Frankenstein is written in Victorian Times, because of that the use of gothic elements which we can easily understand if we know the background, the context.

Fatelessness Book Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9pkYdjj1k

Listening Activity

1. Before the interview, the presenter visits a monument to the Holocaust created by the American artist Peter Eiserman. Considering the shapes, architecture and general design, in what ways do you think he represents the reality in the concentration camps?

- He represents the reality in the concentration camps with the monument as these many and big stone blocks represent how alone and tiny were the jews (in terms of power, rights,etc) compared with the germans.

2. Which is the paradox the presenter mentions regarding Imre Kertész and the place where he lives?

- The paradox the presenter mentions, is that Imre Kertész now lives in Germany, the country who tried to kill him years ago.

3. Refer to antisemitism before and after Auschwitz according to Kertész.

-Antisemitism after Auschwitz according to Kertész refers to the desire to recreate what happened years ago, the Holocaust, the concentration camps, etc. But before Auschwitz it was something smaller, an idea only.

4. In what way do reminders of the past in historical books make us “much richer”?

-The reminders of the past in historical books make us "much richer" as they teach us the problems that they had in the past and how they solved them and the consequences of them so we can learn of they mistakes and don't commit them again or know how to handle them if we commit them.

5. Which metaphor does Imre use to exemplify the effect of FATELESSNESS on its readers?

 - Imre uses the following metaphor: "I continued to worry our souls, and now it knocks from inside the cabinet where we thought we had locked it up." With this metaphor he exemplifies the effect of FATELESSNESS on its reads as it shows that the problems, and all the horrible things that happened are not gone, they are still in our memory and can be remembered with the book.

My Classmate Letter

What language (specific words) did your classmate did you classmate use to appeal the audience? If there is no language appealing the audience, suggest some words.

My classmate used a lot of specific words to appeal the audience, like: "The desire of seeing you again", "physical and mental pain", "suicide has crossed my mind", "A light of hope", between others. These words are very strong and have an important emotive effect on the audience.

How moving is the letter ? Do you think that your classmate's style is effective?

The letter is very moving as it focus the pain the father is suffering but also how strong he can be just to see one more time his son, because of these and many other elements my classmate gather the audience attention, to finally say that his style is very effective.

Explain to what extent the letter includes elements of contexts and time.

The letter includes elements of contexts and time as some words like "labor camp" or even directly referring to the Holocaust by saying: "we will see each other again and live like a happy family that survived the Holocaust!". Thanks to these phrases and the global theme of the letter, we can understand that the context is the II World War, specifically the Holocaust. 

Writing Task

Exchanging Letters 

Dear Father,

It had been a rough and long time without you, I have been waiting for this chance to talk with you about what is going on here. A bit after you left us, I was captured by the nazis and now I have been taken to Auschwitz Birkenau, a concentration camp. This time here has been the worst experience I ever had, the treatment here is awful, we eat and drink almost nothing, we use some ugly clothes that don't help us to keep warm, we are always dirty... I have seen many people die because of different reasons : hunger, thirst, coldness, diseases and even asassination, all of these terrible things without any significant reasons, and even if the nazis had reasons, I shouldn't be here, i am only a child and I haven't done anything to harm them. But they don't understand... I don't find a viable way to get out of here alive, I tried my best to stay awake, I have a friend who is also from Budapest who has been helping me but even with his help I can't keep any longer, this is my last effort to survive, I NEED YOU.

I hope you read this father,
Gyuri

Fatelessness Language Analysis

Pages 90 and 91

Theme: Innocence

"I realized: the fact that I saw no sing of movement, of life, around them. But then it occured to me that this must be only natural". We can see that Gyurka doesn't really understand what is happening and has an innocence explanation for everything, in this case he thought it was "working hour".

"It was al very clean, tidy and pretty" In this case he also dind't knew what was going on, he thought it was a good place.

"The latter was very squad of jovial appearance, and exceesingly fat, his belly beggining at his neck." By last, as said before, Gyurka is very innocent, he doesn't know the harsh time he will had by now.


Pages 180-185

Theme: Hopelessness

Explanation: Hopelessness can be seen in these pages in many ocassions, is the case of the use of words like "gray sky", "perpetual", "furry hoarfroast", "hopeless struggle", "I gave up". All of these phrases, help us understad the harsh life of Gyurka, he was starting to lose hope, he became depressed.

Even when he saw the bus eating his wound, he described the following: "the gluttony", "the teeming", "the voracity", "the appetite", "were vaguely familiar", which really meant what he was feeling from inside. Also as he was so alone and sad, he started to like the presence of the bugs, as if they were his friends.

Pages 138 and 139

Theme: Interaction

Explanation: "Bandi Citrom promptly warned me away from them: 'You lose any will to live just looking at them'". In this case we can see that Gyurka tries to interact with the muslims but he was warned to better keep aside as they where "dangerous".

"Their first question was 'Rayds di Yeddish?' when I told them that not... I became a nonperson, they looked at me as if I were this air".

On this ocassion, the hungarian tried to interact with the muslims but as the hungarian are different and don't speak Yiddish, the muslims dind't care about them and so the muslims did not accept to interact with the hungarian.

The Curious Incident and Gyuri's Mind.

The Curious Incident

1.- It tells us that Christopher's mind receive and collect a lot of information, he haves a very good memory, but he doesn't know or have the ability to decide wherever if the information he receives is important or not to remember.

2.- People choose to describe what is important or significant to them because it have a meaning for them.

3.- Both, some people are lazy as they don't want to receive information and also people select in a different way what they receive because of the different significances and meaning people give to different things.

4.- We should select in a different way that Christopher and reduce what we see because if we select like him, we would be full of meaningless information that will overpass our limit and finally make us stressed.

5.- What governs they way we select what we perceive is our ability to detect what is important or not for us.

6.- The part that language plays in the way we select our perceptions, is that it helps us describe and understand what we see as we can explain our perspective.

7.- It tells us that Christopher's is an untrained one because he doesn't have the ability to detect what is important or not and because of that he is stressed as he is over passed by information. Our one's are trained by many years of school, analyzing different information so we can define what is important or not.

Gyuri's Mind.

1.- This tell us that Gyuri's mind works like a child one, as his thoughts were very innocent, for him everything was good, as his mind couldn't let him realize the horrific things that would come next.

2.- Most 13-year-old children choose to describe what they want for their future, their accomplishments, what they need, and how successful will they be on their lives. Usually in Chile we see all of these in terms of football, most of the 13-year- old children want to be professional football players, some of them say they will play for Colo Colo, Universidad de Chile, etc. and they say they will be very successful and they even compare with some of the greatest football players.

3.- Language plays an interesting part in the way Gyuri selects his perceptions as he uses the language to express his feelings, all mostly positive as his childish and innocent mind just let him look at good things he is living, or turn the bad things into good things.

4.- Based on the whole novel, this passage is not reliable in relation to the rest of the story, as this was just the beginning of a "nightmare", which would finally change his way to see things, so at this time he had not experienced what really matters to the rest of the story.