Conrad de Menil ILS The Struggle for Dignity and Freedom Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Thomas Mann’s “Mario and the Magician” both address the connection between free will, dignity, and virtue. Dignity according to Tzvetan Todorov is, “[c]ontinuing to be a subject of your own free will, capable of making decisions and acting upon them.” While in the face of different adversaries, SS officers and the dehumanizing Auschwitz concentration camp for Primo Levi, and a cynical magician for the narrator, the two main characters take different approaches to trying to be virtuous and maintain their dignity. Primo Levi maintains his dignity by surviving Auschwitz at all costs. Levi does the most out of what he has, whether it be by stealing …show more content…
After watching the mesmerizing and strange first half of Cipolla’s act, the narrator faced the thought of leaving the performance early and act virtuously, or stay and watch the horrific events of the second half unfold. Looking back, the narrator knows that he made the wrong decision to stay and even at the moment does “not know why [we stayed.] I cannot defend myself.” The narrator admits that the entire audiences “feelings for Cavaliere Cipolla were of a very mixed kind,... and nobody left… One was curious to know how such an evening turned out; Cipolla in his remarks having all along hinted that he had tricks in his bag stranger than any he had yet produced.” The narrator and the entire audience around him allow themselves to lose their free will and their dignity under the false feelings of being under the sway of Cipolla. Even after having the feeling that something bad was going to happen later in the show, the narrator does not leave and puts his kids in a situation where they have witnessed a murder by the end of the story, thus acting unvirutously and losing his