Lesliebeth Rosario
Professor Kratka & Matyakubova
FIQWS
April 24, 2017
Critical Analysis Essay
Sadness Comes from Within
Many
different factors contribute to a person’s internal feelings. Whether it’s a lost of some sort or finding
out great news, people have different emotions.
One of the most commonly used concepts in stories or books is the
function of melancholy and how it relates to the characters being portrayed in
a scenario. Melancholy is a feeling of
pensive sadness typically with no obvious cause but can be a result of a past
event that may have happened to a person.
It can lead to a deep depression and just lack of energy for some normal
activities. Cynthia Ozick and Saul
Bellow furthered defined this theory through the use of characters in some of
their amazing works. Both works of literature
use sadness and despair through the death of Magda in "Rosa" by Cynthia
Ozick and the denial of Wilky from his loved ones in Seize the Day by Saul Bellow to express the
aftermath of these traumatic events.
“Rosa” by
Cynthia Ozick is a second part to her short story “The Shawl” in which her
daughter Magda was killed shocked by an electric fence during the cold times of
the holocaust. In this sequel, Rosa is
seen a few years later in the city somehow free of the past horrors that haunt
her. In “The Shawl” she held her
daughter under a shawl that was protecting her from sight while marching into
concentration camps. The unthinkable
actions of her niece, Stella, got her daughter exposed after Stella took the
shawl for her own comfort and left her to die when a guard came by and threw
her against the elective fence used to secure the camps. In the sequel she tells a man that her his
Warsaw isn’t her Warsaw as she experience way different than he did during the
holocaust.
Rosa’s
heart was crushed when her daughter died and had to live with it one way or
another. The death of Magda was what
drew her conscious mind to survive in a positive way. Death is something that anyone can find
traumatizing and depending on the connection one had with a past alm,
determines how life can change both around and mentally for a person. She didn’t have anyone to blame because her
niece wasn’t aware and took the shawl without thinking twice so she went along
with her consequences of losing her other half.
She was living in denial about the death of her daughter and never
thought about her being gone which is normally a side effect that comes with
the depression of a person.
Another
example of despair with the death of her daughter is the fact that she kept her
spirit alive. Rosa would write letters
to herself in her daughter’s perspective saying what she’s has done so far with
her life. They talked about many
achievements Magda has “accomplished” and how she’s healthy and living
successful just as Rosa would have wanted her to turn out or any parent in
general. In my opinion this is her
calmative and it’s the only way she can function with the joy of having her
daughter around and even though it’s not physically, spiritually she will
forever remain in her heart.
Seize
the Day by Saul
Bellow is about a man named Tommy Wilhelm who lives in a hotel in the upper
west side of New York City the same hotel in which his father has resided for a
number of years. As the book starts, it
talks about Wilhem on his way to meet his father for breakfast yet something
feels uncertain. He feels fear and lies
to come to him soon, and his thoughts are uncovered through his conversations
with his father Dr. Adler and others. He
falls in love with a woman named Olive whom he can not marry because his wife
would not grant him a divorce. He meets
a psychologist named Dr. Tamkin whom he spends a lot of time with and seems to
be his only comfort from the real world.
One melancholic event in this
novella has to be the lack of Love wilhelm gets from his father. Bellow stated, “Now he reflected, In dad’s
eyes I am the wrong kind of Jew. He doesn’t like the way I act. Only he is the
right kind of Jew. Whatever you are, it always turns out to be the wrong kind”
(83). Earlier in the story he explained
how his father disowned him because Wilhelm decided to change his family last
name into a better version of it. His
father is really strict and saw that as kind of a sign of disobedience to his
religion. The lack of comfort from his
father made him overthink but had to face up to the consequences of being
independent. His father always told him
never to have anyone on his back to show him how to become individualistic.
Last but
not least the sadness that was expressed through Seize the Day came from neglection of Wilhelms kids. Towards the end of the story Tommy makes a
phone call to the mother of his kids to tell her how messed up of a week he has
had. The author mentioned, “It isn’t a
question of money- there are other things a father can give to a son” (Bellow
106). This meant that money can’t really
buy happiness. The hint thrown there was
that a father can also give love to his kid and one can be satisfied in their
own way. Tommy and his father had
miscommunication throughout the whole story which is why is was so difficult
for Tommy to even ask his father for a favor.
In other words mentally Wilhelm suffered because he felt alone like he
had no one to turn to emotionally but Dr. Tamkin which wasn’t all the way
satisfying to Tommy.
Melancholy
is a component in our everyday lifestyle in which we can’t escape. The idea of deep sadness relates to a poem I
read in class. “Wait for Me” by
Konstantin Simonov talk about waiting and how during wartime most soldiers
battling never returned back to their loved ones, but that if you believe and
wait long enough they might just come back.
The poet Simonov expounds this when he writes, “Wait for me and I'll return, only wait very hard.
Wait when you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain” (1-2). This meant that although there’s a melancholy
feeling due to the event going on around them, having faith and showing some
sort of positivity can help. Not
everyone has the same way of coping with specific despondency but as long as a
person manages to move on one way or another, reflects on how serious the
situation might have been.
Being deeply sad isn’t good for
oneself in any way shape or form. It
brings negativity and changes the atmosphere to the way a person lives. The way people handle their own sorrow all
depends on the kind of person you are.
Despite if it’s a family conflict or the passing of another person,
melancholy takes effect on people in their own ways. After reading these two stories I have come
to the conclusion that depression can be a result of melancholic events one may
go through. What would Rosa’s daughter
actually be like if she were to live? Or Why did Wilky’s kids neglect him? Are
the few questions I would ask myself that I would want answers to. Despair has it’s own way of dealing with, but
for Rosa and Tommy it wasn’t easy but they managed to put up with their
situations.
Works Cited
"Saul Bellow's Moral Vision." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2017.
"Seize the Day." Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 4. Detroit:
Gale, 1998.
276-296. Gale
Virtual Reference Library. Web. 6 Apr. 2017.
"The Shawl." Short
Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1998.
285-303. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 6 Apr. 2017.
Uzun, Gamze. "A Shawl to Remember: Cynthia Ozick's
Narrative against Forgetting in The
Shawl." Pamukkale University Journal of Social Sciences Institute. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 06
Apr. 2017.
