On Friday, I could not verbalize what my thoughts in the in-class writing or the class discussion, so have decided to try to do it in this blog, and hopefully I am much more successful.
Although it was not a very significant line in the passage, when the hotel manager told Rosa to go home, I started thinking about what Rosa considered home. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, there are a handful of definitions for the word home; one of which is “the social unit formed by a family living together.”
Rosa was ripped from her home and her family in her early to mid twenties. Readers never find out what happened to Rosa and Stella’s family, nor if Rosa or Stella found out what happened to them. The last place that Rosa felt she had a family was in the concentration camp before Magda was executed by a Nazi throwing her into an electric fence. When a mother loses a child, part of the mother dies with the child and I believe this is extremely evident with Rosa. When Magda died, she began to regress emotionally and started sucking on the shawl the way Magda would. When Magda died, Rosa felt she lost all that she considered to be family and home. Rosa may have been alive physically, but mentally and emotionally, Rosa died with Magda in the concentration camp.
Rosa tried to create this sense of family by writing letters to Magda and creating a fantasy life; she was trying to create a place where she could feel at home. Although Rosa seems to be out of touch with reality most of the time, I think it is because she never fully coped with what she experienced and everything she went through.
Although Rosa does not treat Stella very well, I think it is safe to say that Stella still associates Rosa with a sense of home. Stella younger than Rosa when the Holocaust started, and I feel that allowed her to be more resilient when moving to the United States to start to put the pieces back together. Stella demonstrates her commitment to Rosa by sending her money each month to survive. I also believe this is why Stella wanted Rosa to take part in the study. Stella feels she has done all she can to help her aunt put the pieces back together, but knows she has not gotten anywhere and that her aunt is slowly losing touch with reality. Stella knows that Rosa needs guidance to be able to deal with everything they had to endure at the concentration camp, and feels that the study will help her to do that. Stella wants Rosa to take part in the study because she does not want to lose the last family member that she has and the sense of home that creates.
This novel has been a bit challenging for me to read. It is not one you can sit down and read leisurely. You have to take the time to keep re-reading passages to pick up on the carefully placed symbolism and irony to understand what is happening. Sometimes I feel like I spend so much time focusing on one part, that I do not get exactly what I should be getting from the other parts. I also think this is why I had some trouble verbalizing what I was thinking on Friday. I am also a little bit intimidated to talk about this book during class discussions, because I am not sure if I am on the right track.
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