English Advanced
Module C: Representation and Text: History and Memory
Outcomes Addressed
A student:
H1explains and evaluates the effects of different contexts of responders and composers on texts
H2explains relationships among texts
H3develops language relevant to the study of English
H4explains and analyses the ways in which language forms and features, and structures of texts shape meaning and influence responses
H5explains and evaluates the effects of textual forms, technologies and their media of production on meaning.
H7adapts and synthesises a range of textual features to explore and communicate information, ideas and values, for a variety of purposes, audiences and contexts.
H8articulates and represents own ideas in critical, interpretive and imaginative texts from a range of perspectives
H9evaluates the effectiveness of a range of processes and technologies for various learning purposes including the investigation and organisation of information and ideas
H10analyses and synthesises information and ideas into sustained and logical argument for a range of purposes, audiences and contexts
H12Aexplains and evaluates different ways of responding to and composing text
This module requires students to:
- Explore the text’s representation of the Holocaust
- Evaluate how medium of production, textual form, perspective and features of non-fiction influence meaning
- Understand the relationship between representation and meaning
- Supplement the study with a variety of texts of their own choosing, drawn from a variety of sources, in a range of genres and media
- Explore different versions and perspectives of the Holocaust
- Develop a range of imaginative, interpretive and analytical compositions that may be realised in a variety of forms and media, explore the relationships between individual memory and documented events, and consider the role of personal experience and empathy in the growth of cultural knowledge.
Module C: Representation and Text: History and Memory
Students explore the relationship between individual memory and documented events and consider the role of personal experience in the growth of cultural knowledge.
As memory is the individual, so is history to the community or society. Without memory, individuals find great difficulty in relating to others, in finding their bearings, in making intelligent decisions – they have lost their sense of identity.
What is history?
- What has happened
- Evidence
- Documented events
- Facts
- Record
- Objective in essence
- The past
- Detached from emotions
- Collaborated understanding
- Lacks personal experience and emotions
- History repeats itself
- Humanity – some issues in human nature
- Power – politics, religion, morality, ethnicity
- Detached from emotions
- Can’t learn vicariously
- Some things we can’t change
- Lacks personal experience and emotion
- Easily manipulated
- Different interpretations
- Secondary Source
- Reliability?
- Shared memory
- Verified
What is memory?
- Inherently individual
- Blocked
- Idiosyncratic
- Subjective
- Perception of history
- Recollection of events
- Fragmented
- Can be unrealistic
- Manipulated
- Fill in the blanks
- Influences decision
- Can control it
- Shaped by emotions
- Becomes history when verified
- Repressed – pain, denial
- Forget
- Blackness – sheds light
- Unreliable
- Collective memory
- Shapes who you are
Epigram – metaphor of the book
“There is a palace of hidden treasures.”
Palace
-Aspiration
-Precious
-Large
-Magical
-Place of hidden memories. esp. mother – hides hers
-Hidden treasures – what cannot be found
“In this palace there are fourty – nine gates that separate
good from evil, the blessing from the curse.”
-Double edge sword
-Opposites
“Beyond them is a fiftieth gate lager than the entire
world.”
-Once you are there you are in heaven
-Paradise and nirvana
-Oxymoron – choose to ignore
-Hidden – too large to contemplate – vastness of mind
“It is a hidden gate.”
-Concept of knowledge rather than the physical. Don’t have to see it.
-hidden – hidden within yourself
“On this gate there is a lock, which has a narrow place
where the key may be inserted.”
-Obstacles in the way
-Need to overcome these obstacles in order to reach the fiftieth gate
-narrow place – contrasts to ‘large gate’ – only a small opportunity in which to overcome these obstacles
“Come and see.”
-Asked to go on a journey
-See through the eyes
“Through this gate all other gates may be seen.”
-Is retrospective, will understand how you got through clear understanding
“Whoever enters the fiftieth gate sees through
God’s eyes from end of the world to the other.”
-Is omnipresent, omniscient, everywhere – creator sees and knows everything
-Will see god once fiftieth gate is reached
“The darkness or the light.”
-Need light – end of darkness for Mark Baker – stop the darkness for his children
“Come and see.”
-Repetition
-Eyes/ seeing motif
“The key is the broken heart, the yearning for prayer,
the memory of death.”
-Paint and suffering emotional hurt
-Asking for forgiveness, understanding, insight
-Wanting to believe
-Death of others, a way of life, of your soul
-A part inside you dies – layers of life on top of bad memories
-The key is on the inside – only the individual can reach the fiftieth gate – unaided
“The key is the forgotten heart, the murdered prayer,
the death of memory.”
-Emotion or love has been buried
-Reliving memories. Put the past behind them. Allows you to move on.
“It opens the blessing or the curse.”
-Don’t do right thing, have values or intentions, thought about how you would get rid of it.
“Come and see.”
-Motif
Chapter 1
“Nothing I don’t recognise anything.” – Deterioration of memory
Repression of memory – loss – age contributes
Past experiences force them to forget
“This memory thing is no light matter for my father.” – Links to epigram – light – father clinging onto past culture
“Infectious smiles, dancing images.” – Memories are seen through the eyes
“Stream of light rushes past us…” – light motif – links to epigram
Chapter 2
Memory is affected by age and context
History deteriorates memory
“Hobbles past a fallen gate” – indicative of lost memory – metaphor
Chapter 3
“In the fields there is an eery silence” – silence – like her mind – trying to repress memory
Physically searching through memory – “I began this search through scattered stones.
Memory helps history live on.
Memory forces him to live in fear.
Chapter 4
“It’s very clear from the past, more clear than now.” – Deterioration of memory
“What was his name? I’ve forgotten, but It’ll come back to me.” – Opening of the fiftieth gate – unlocking memory
Chapter 5
“’Ruins, ruins.’ She muttered at the end of the tour.” – Looks at happy memories, ignores the sad – selective memory
Chapter 6
“I remember on Saturday all the Jews…”
“So much more to say about my family before the war.” – Memory – before and after
Melbourne – symbol of new beginning – Mark’s birth
“Do you remember crying when you were a baby?” – Unreliability of memory
“I have heard much about the moment from my mother.” – Memory given from mother.
Hot tea – Mark’s worst memory – contrast to parent’s worst memory – Holocaust
Cracked egg for burning – no cure for emotional burning – have no panacea
Younger generations cannot empathise – hot tea and cracked egg downplay the significance of Holocaust
Jewish tradition is still carried on in Melbourne – cultural values, customs carried on
Got punched for being a Jew when he was younger – If we don’t learn from the past history repeats itself
Hunger acts as a trigger
Chapter 7
“Do you still believe in god… after everything that happened?” – Does he believe that god would let that happen?
Yossl says Genia’s faith is stronger.
Yossl survived with luck, Genia with courage.
“My facts from the past are different.” – Mother has memory of a perfect town – doesn’t believe her town was corrupted – hard to take – history broke her memory down.
“I don’t see a gate.”
Chapter 8
Fairy tale – history was validating memory
Chapter 9
“I went to a fancy dress party as Hitler.” – shows his naivety of situation
Mind is constantly alert – mother a born survivor – father is not – mother is left alone – Yossl is not, he has his comrades
Chapter 10
Extract – describes Bolszowce – language factual – indicative of history
Chapter 11
Focus of chapter is Yossl and Yossl’s memory
“My father works amongst his departed friends, seeking signs of intimacy with fragmented moment from his childhood.”- Struggle to link physical history with memory
“It is an empty and chaotic landscape of death.”
“Can you hear, or do the screams from the mass grave drown out the sounds.” Attempting to unlock the memories – can memory prevail? Lamenting the death of his friends
Chapter 12
About sages they’ve learnt – A Garden of Eden. Rabi entered and existed in peace – taught different by Mark’s parents – Mark’s parents do no want to openly reveal memory
Chapter 13
Report card – trigger
There was more to this episode then he was prepared to admit – Genia can’t substantiate her memory with facts
“Tomorrow you children will shed your tears, tuck your memories in and say goodnight.”
Chapter 14
Mark reflecting on what he has done.
Chapter dominated by history
Yossl – sense of pride “For my father the rivers have not thawed, until now, when his words break out from their glacial silence, releasing a torrent into his darkest nights.”
Chapter 15
Mark’s father recounting the loss of his own father.
Different view – history shows exactly what happened – as a number
Chapter 16
“I repeat: I can show you what your father wore when he arrived in Buchenwald”
Power of history – Baker uses it to reveal mundane detail – what he is here – father is outraged – downgrades Mark’s use of history
“I know the story she is about to tell, word for word…”
Still have happy memories/communication
Focus on Mark’s memories – his childhood
Because his parents didn’t reveal memories, it compelled him to discover it for himself
“I turned my own bedroom into a horror-house of memories… photographs of massacred bodied.”
Didn’t understand it, as it wasn’t explained
Chapter 17
Historical recreation of his Grandfather’s life
When he was in the concentration camps – Yossl’s dad
Very blunt “Jews were only fit to die…”
Representation – history is blunt/scientific
Chapter 18
“…even today I’m still scared of darkness…”
“Nightfall is to me sadness and darkness and I just can’t disconnect my past…”
How the past influences the future.
Chapter 19
Presents different memories/perspectives
Highlights the contrast between history and memory and their cohesive nature
“I believe I have never come home so depressed. I am a man but I cry at home because of the fact that this was expected of me.” Regretting was cruelty – which wasn’t his choice
“What we did was brutal, cruel and inhumane…”
“I can’t describe my inner feelings.”
Chapter 20
Combination of history and memory – allocation of how everyone was murdered – scientific, blunt
“Jews do not remember with flowers… they wither… as if the corpse is a temporal thing… Jews do not remember with mirrors… Jews remember with stones… and… with Lords…” repetition – stones – permanent
“tak, tak, tak” – memory – trigger – sound – aural - Yossl
Chapter 21
Memory remembers scenes of emotional hurt.
“Damn Jew can’t you run?” – A forceful use of language – Yossl’s memories
“Left, right. Left, right.” – Something to trigger memory – repetition of marching
The fight of memory – the fight to reach the fiftieth gate – “He throws the child against the gate. He smashes her head.”
The purpose of the text – To remove the ‘blackness’ – For Mark himself to reach the fiftieth gate, and remove the burden from his children
“An old man struggles…” “A younger man cries out…” – Contrast between young and old – the older man is adamant, he struggles, he is stubborn reflects Mark’s relationship with his parents – Mark cries out and tries to remove the blackness, while his parents continue to struggle.
“Her O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” – Prayer – impact of religion on text – their faith never falters
“What of Hinda and her four children?” – Women unable to support themselves – became head of the family while their husbands went to war – Mark’s worry about his own family – his children growing up in the dark
Chapter 22
Yossl’s memories
The distortion of memory – “I don’t know what date… what month… what year.”
“He says it was cold, Winter. But it was warm. Autumn.” – The loss makes it feel cold.
Memory remember scenes of emotional trauma “People were scared, the dogs were chasing us, everyone was chasing…” – creates empathy – rhythm of speech
The conflict of history and memory
“Dare I tell him his age?”
History is told in a factual manner – incomplete sentences – emphasis on dates and time – makes Yossl’s experience real
The ‘us and them’ perspective as a result of the war – “They took us away. They marched us…” – both sides of the war – anonymous – like Yossl’s number – loss of identity “Thirteen? Fourteen?,” “1942? or 1943?” – number don’t matter
Yossl’s personal context – looks at death through the eyes of a child “Not yet bar mitzvahed…” – looks at death through physical aspects
Chapter 23
History is the main focus of the chapter – number and statistics
Memory – “Where have the millions of Jews gone?” – death though it’s not stated – ambiguous
Chapter 24
Memory provides closure – Mark needs his parents’ memory to gain closure – memory cannot be learnt
“Of my mother’s world I knew next to nothing.”
Genia is opposed to history – shows her son doubts her
“Do you remember you told me you were the only one to survive Bolszowce well it’s true. I mean, I believed you, but it’s really true.” – shows he had doubt
History needs proof
“It was not the facts that were held under suspicion, but her credibility as a survivor.” – Mark associates trauma with physical injury – coincides with the history/ memory theme, the objective/subjective
History can provide closure – Yossl has his past outlined – Genia doesn’t
The impact on the next generation
“Ow-switch. O shwish. Aaaarshuitz. And later were added: Arse-witch, Oswiecim, sounds which lull me to sleep as I count the syllables jumping into the fence.”
Chapter 25
Parents feel they missed out on childhood memories – cherish trivialities
“I was good at my work. I was young, but I was still good.”
Memory colliding with history
“But I can still se the holes” – Yossl still has scars from the war – emotional scars
The disturbance of memory refreshes past trauma
“Why, why has we brought them here?”
Proud of history – it is physical proof of one’s memory
“My father explains the process of the smelter as if her were guiding prospective buyers through his clothing factory.”
The difficulty in accepting history
“It is difficult to imagine my father enslaved in physical toil”
Chapter 26
“How can you be so sure? Were you there? You think that suddenly because you’ve read a few pieces of paper that you suddenly understand everything?”
“Grey hair from all your questions.” – Characterisation – Genia is tired
Chapter 27
Kurt Gerstein – experience of people getting off the trains
“The final moment can never be retrieved by history. Nor by memory,”
“It was difficult to separate them while emptying the room for the next batch.”- Batch – not even human
Chapter 28
Yossl’s experiences at Auschwitz and the concentration camps
No real perception of time – mark has dates, etc
“I became his calendar, making sense of time for him, when days, months and even years meant nothing.”
“Tap, tap, tap.” – trigger
“He is frustrated, angry at memory again.”
Chapter 29
“The fire; the parchment burning; the bodies buried; the letters soaring high; turned to ashen dust.”
Chapter 30
Mark passing on memories to his children
Wonders whether he should have told his kids about their grandparents memories – will it hurt them>
“Free of the mountains and stony walls that hem it’s inhabitants into history.”
“Only a broken heart yearns to heal the world.”
Chapter 31
“I don’t remember how the transport happened – was it by truck or… this, I don’t really remember.”- Memory repressed – Genia has forgotten
Historical facts “soon after my mother arrival.” Contrasting to facts
Yossl able to express memory easily “A disaster! How could you bring me back here? So I can have more nightmares?”
Chapter 32
“I don’t believe you!” Mark has knowledge of history which clashes with memory “Prove it… I don’t believe this part. Prove it.” P190.
Religion – Judaism – spread throughout – Sabbath – Day of rest – Genia had to learn the Lord’s Prayer in Polish
Chapter 33
“For every alternative there is an alternate.” How things could have changed
“Left. Right.” – Luck
“Imagine, the same story, different endings” Everything left to chance
Chapter 34
“Oh my papa he was so wonderful…” Didn’t give Genia fatherly connection
“This book will be for generations to come… Please, I beg you be careful what you say. It’s forever, It’s our family.” Doesn’t want him to degrade their family
“Raid on my mother’s memory.”- Relates himself to those who tormented his mother – he raids her memory himself – connotations to stealing
Chapter 35
“So when I exhausted memory, I turned to history.”- Relates to history – less ‘true’ than memory
“Memory visited her as a stranger from another world.”p214 – Doesn’t like to access/revisit her memories – it’s a ‘stranger’- unfamiliar
Food – trigger – buttermilk
Chapter 36
“You can’t begin to understand what it means to survive the death of your entire world.” – Nothing lives up to the memory – can read and learn, but never experience
“And this woman – this woman who gave me life, who is she?” Mark talking about Genia –doesn’t know everything about Genia – so unlike Yossl – doesn’t talk
Chapter 37
“I enter a field with a river of wine… I dreamt that the wine has turned to blood.” – Rapid change in situation/life
Gate keeper “I do not have the key.” Mark cannot experience his parent’s memories