1 & 2 The Journey & On the Bottom

• Engels
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• GCSE

The Narrative Perspective 

The memoir is written from the author's point of view, as a 24 year old Italian Jew imprisoned in Auschwitz. He wrote the book within a year of release, although not published until 1958. 

We see everything through his eyes which creates an intimate atmosphere, and a deeply personal narrative. We experience the horrors of Auschwitz with him.

What could be some of the effects and benefits of this narrative perspective? Discuss. 

Some effects and benefits of first person narration - possible ideas. 

Recount dialogue between characters, without worrying about creating their “inner life”

Speculation about what might have happened or how a character might have felt is possible. This increases uncertainty.

Evoking another character’s consciousness is possible

Through the use of this narrative point of view, Levi ensures dramatic intensity by having all the action filtered through one man’s consciousness and presented in retrospect.

Primo Levi 

Poem - intertextuality

heart and in your soul. Bind them as a sign upon your arm and let them be a reminder above your eyes. Teach them to your children, speaking of them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down at night and when you rise up. Write them on the doorposts of your homes and on your gates. Thus your days and the days of your children will be multiplied on the land which the Lord promised to your ancestors for as long as the heavens remain over the earth. (Deuteronomy 11:18-21)

The poem is an echo of an important Jewish prayer drawn from the Old Testament, known as the "Ve'ahavta", meaning, "you shall love."

Levi subverts the blessing in the prayer into a curse at the end of the poem. Why has he done this? Discuss. 

What is highlighted and questioned in the poem? Discuss 

• Levi encapsulates the whole situation described in the book
  
• Two forms of humanity are compared – the free and the unfree, the living and the dead, the comfortable and the suffering.
  
• The line between the two is very slender – especially when you can become part of the other group based on someone else’s whim
  
• Are these prisoners still human after all the abuse they have endured? is the central question.
  
• The poem (and the wider novel) is a form of bearing witness; Levi does not want the world to forget lest history repeats itself ("I commend these words to you")
  

“It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944”

A confusing and paradoxical statement (and a great opening line too!)

1. Why would Levi state this? Is he right?

2. What was your first reaction on reading that? (Be honest!)

His arrest 

Levi assumes he is endangered by political crimes rather than his Jewishness. This shows he doesn’t fully understand the threat that the German expansion posed. 

Comment on the tone and way in which the author conveys  information. What does this establish about the guards and system?

"Our destination? Nobody knew. We should be prepared for a fortnight of travel. For every person missing at roll-call, ten would be shot." 

deadpan, indifferent, straightforward, unembellished, blunt, nonchalant

Dehumanisation 

Make a list from chapter 1 and 2 of some of the techniques used to dehumanise the prisoners. 

Why, do you think, were they successful? 

What narrative techniques highlight that the Nazis seem to go about their job as if it were completely normal?  Great acts of brutality and violence appear to take place with chilling indifference. 

Removing clothing 

Removing all personal belongings 

Shaving 

Disinfecting

Name replaced with a number 

Uniform 

Tatooed 

Loss of volition 

Loss of language 

The Stanford Prison Experiment 

Read the information on the website on the next page. Read all eight pages. 

Whilst you are reading, play close attention to how the guards behave. 

Notice how the prisoners are stripped, given numbers and disinfected just like the prisoners at Auschwitz. 

www.prisonexp.org

Goals for today 

Cognitive dissonance and Levi's experiences 

Writing a response to this information 

Consideration of two characters 

The experiences of the author so far 

The Stanford Prison Experiment 

• An infamous psychological experiment held in 1971  
  
• Professor Zimbardo wanted to explore the nature of power dynamics. How do people behave if power is given or taken away? 
  
• The experiment is infamous because of how unethically it was organised. Zimbardo did not stay out of his own experiment; he was the Superintendent of the “prison”. Worryingly, he failed to recognise he was being sucked in and refused to stop. 
  
• The experiment stopped 8 days early because a psychology lecturer explicitly challenged the ethics of it – she was the only person of all the adults involved to question the morality of the experiment. 
  
• Afterwards, both the “prisoners” and the “guards” expressed shock and surprise that they behaved as they did.
  

The Stanford Prison Experiment results

The main result of the experiment was that people will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, and it had little to do with their personalities. 

It demonstrated the problem of cognitive dissonance, where people who consider themselves to be kind and empathetic can also behave in horrific ways, seeming to contradict their moral values. 

The Stanford Prison Experiment results

The “prisoners” seemed to demonstrate a kind of learned helplessness – whatever they did, they would be treated cruelly so they gave up trying to be good and became helpless.

Similarly, the “guards” seemed to be cruel because of the “prison” environment; none of the participants had showed sadistic tendencies before the study.

The guards may have been so brutal because they did not feel what happened was down to them personally – it was a group norm. They also may have lost their sense of personal identity because of the uniform they wore.

Crucially, nobody ever asked why, just like at Auschwitz.

Personal response

Write one paragraph responding to what you have read so far in the memoir and what you now know about the Stanford Prison Experiment. 

Dehumanisation 

• Jews have no time to prepare themselves or hold ceremony
  
• Jewish prisoners are “pieces”
  
• Prisoners lied to over family reunions
  
• Asked to hand over their money and jewellery
  

"For people condemned to death, tradition prescribes an austere ceremony, calculated to emphasise that all passions and anger have died down, and that the act of justice represents only a sad duty towards society which moves even the executioner to pity for the victim. Thus the condemned man is shielded from all external cares, he is granted solitude and, should he want it spiritual comfort; in short, care is taken that he should feel around him neither hatred nor arbitrariness, only necessity and justice, and by means of punishment, pardon. 

     But to us this was not granted, for we were many and time was short. And in any case, what had we to repent, for what crime did we need pardon?"  

What are Primo Levi's 'signature moves'? What style and/or language choices do you notice in his writing style?

Style and language 

1. Juxtaposes factual language with evocative descriptions.  
   
2. Zooms in on key details, often depending on the five senses to evoke the event - visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory & tactile imagery
   
3. sparingly uses figurative language. Similes are employed.
   
4. objective prose is striking considering the catastrophic situation he describes
   
5. A stark, direct, blunt, austere style using factual language
   
6. employment of statistics and numbers to give ethos to his memoir. 
7. An ironic and deadpan tone. 
8. Uses individual examples to represent the experiences of many. 
   
9. Employs semantic fields to develop coherence and similarity. 
10. short, direct, sometimes single paragraph sentences are interspersed with long, complex sentences for emphasis.