The poem “First they came” by Martin Neimoller and the allegory "Terrible Things” by Eve Bunting express a similar theme of inaction although the authors’ used different modes to get their message across. Throught the allegory “Terrible things” it tells us how one animal gets taken away one by one but they thought nothing of it and they tried to justify why the other animals were getting taken away. In the allegory page 8, it says, “Those squirrels were greedy,” Big Rabbit said.
The short story "The Terrible Things" connects to the quote by Elie Wiesel in today's agenda because the quote says, " Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow." which can connect to the animals in the short story when they chose to stay silent as "The Terrible Things" took away all of the animals. This short story is allegory about the Holocaust, and Eve Bunting uses the forest and animals to make it accessible to children of any age. The story "The Terrible Things" is used to inform people about how much of an impact that the Holocaust and persecutions had on people of different races. Eve Bunting is able to make it accessible to everyone because he uses the words "The Terrible Things" to describe the horrible and traumatizing
Elie Wiesel, a male Holocaust survivor, once said: “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference” and “Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.” During the Holocaust, over eleven million innocent people were killed because of the hate and intolerance the Nazis had for them. Many people fight against the injustice of the Nazi party and without them hundreds more people could have died. Intolerance and hate were some main causes of the Holocaust, and the fight against it is shown in The Book Thief, The Whispering Town, Paper Clips, and Eva’s Story.
This allegory uses the story of the animals being targeted and grouped by the Terrible Things to symbolize what happened during the Holocaust. The animals symbolize the minorities and the Jewish people that were targeted by the Nazis. The Terrible Things are the persecutors and symbolize how the Nazis tormented and tyrannized over the groups they selected. The idea that “life went on almost as before" reflects the number of people during World War II that were able to ignore or deny the severity of what the persecuted experienced. People could not fathom such brutality, so they rationalized the cruel actions of the Nazis, instead of speaking out when necessary.
Hitler and his Nazis were not the only ones accountable for the death of six million Jews, bystanders are also responsible. This is one of the themes explored in the memoir, Night by Eliezer Wiesel, which tells of the horrific experiences he went through as a Jew during the Holocaust. He does this by sharing his struggles Wiesel hopes to encourage his audience by recounting the lessons he learned during the darkest days of his life to avoid being bystanders by observing, speaking out, and not conforming. When a person is observant they are able to sense changes in advance even when based on the most minute of details.
When the story of a horrific tragedy is reported on the news, Americans may feel remorseful, but only temporarily. The thought is pushed quickly out of the mind as they are consumed with other, less important things. Rather than donating to charity, volunteering, or giving aid to the homeless, humanity looks on. This is not a recent development; Americans have been immune to tragedies since before World War II. Elie Wiesel, a man who has become a human’s rights activist after spending two years in Buchenwald and Auschwitz at age fifteen, spoke at the White House about The Perils of Indifference during the 1999 Millennium Lecture series.
Someone can keep their sense of humanity even when faced with evil and cruelty by keeping empathy and compassion towards others. Throughout human history, there have been events that have led people to ask. Why would someone do such a thing? Inside the two books Night by Wiesel and “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Goodrich and Hackett, an incredibly evil event is taking place, in particular, The Holocaust. The Holocaust was performed by German officers led by Adolf Hitler.
Eve Bunting created an allegory that expressed the holocaust through an extended metaphor and indirect/direct characterization in the Terrible Things. The extended metaphor that is conveyed through Terrible Things is relating the forest and all of its animals to the victims of the holocaust/those that did not help. Every single animal is taken by the Terrible things except for little rabbit. The Terrible things can be inferred to be humans through indirect characterization of them having nets and blotting out the sun. This is similar to how they trapped and took Jews in the holocaust.
Symbolism can be seen through both good and bad alike. Though when it comes to instances that have to do with the holocaust, it’s almost always, if not always, a painful connotation. The holocaust is one of if not the the largest instance of mass genocide in recorded history. Leaving each Jew that survived with a different story to tell. While their story’s remained different, the pain that they each experienced was not.
People’s actions can bring great consequences. These consequences could be close to nothing, or something horrific. An example of this is the Holocaust. This event is talked about more in depth by Elie Wiesel who wrote the book “Night.” In the story, Elie Wiesel talks about the dehumanization he experienced during the Holocaust.
With the tragedy of the Holocaust (1933 - 1945) many Jewish people were sent to concentration camps and executed. With this tragedy it may seem like no one is good at heart. People were forced to commit wretched crimes, but Anne believes that there is still good in the world when she said “...in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Pg. 237.
Helping the enemy People only care about themselves! It is not their problem if six million people of a group are murdered, right? Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the holocaust, the systematic murder of over six million Jews, wrote a speech about the dangers of indifference. Indifference is not caring and according to Elie Wiesel, it is the opposite of love and worse than hate. In “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel, he uses his experiences, logic and points made from rhetorical questions to persuade his audience about how one should act when they see injustice.
Many people were too scared to take a stand and help the religions and races that were targeted in the holocaust. But if we ever forget all the pain and suffering then this could easily happen again, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” – Primo Levi. It is up to us to spread the tragic story of the Holocaust to make sure the common man does not let these evil monsters of our world to come to power ever again.
In the story “Terrible Things” and “The video Child of the Holocaust” has many facts, points of views from both of the author’s perspective, their word choice, and what facts they use to describe the Holocaust. In the story “Terrible
In the poem, “On the Divine” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the author states, “Noble be Man,/ Generous and good”. This quote is meant to show that mankind is to be noble and good from a very optimistic perspective. However, put in such an event as the Holocaust, for example, this quote is proven wrong, for mankind has just as much potential to be noble and kind as they do to be selfish and cruel. In the Holocaust memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel, the author proves just this. The author, being a survivor of the Holocaust, writes of his first hand experience struggling through the awful events that happened to him and many other innocent people.
