Wednesday, April 19, 2017
THROUGH 15 -Alice
1. "Now I understood everything. I realized why God would not listen to my prayers, why I was hung from hooks, why Garbos beat me, why I lost my speech. I was black. Why hair and eyes were as black as these Kalmuks'. Evidently I belonged with them in another world. There would be no mercy for such as me. A dreadful fate had sentenced me to have black hair and eyes in common with this horde of savages." This reading included many a horror. We saw a five year old girl raped. We saw countless women abused in the most deprived ways, and we saw an eleven year old boy lose hope. What I want to hear, though, is what you think he's trying to say hear. Is it better to be a Kalmuk or a village person? He seems to consider the Kalmuks far worse than Garbos and the townspeople who raped and murdered Ludmilla. Is there a difference other than their coloring? Who do you think is more evil? Can evil be quantified? Where's the line between forgivable and unforgivable?
2. "So that's what love was: savage as a bull prodded with a spike; brutal, smelly, sweaty. This love was like the brawl in which man and woman wrested pleasure from each other, fighting, incapable of thought, half stunned, wheezing, less than human." That last question was a bit of a doozy so for this one I just want to ask if you think love exists in this world. Or in general.
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1. As far as which is better, being a village person or a Kalmuk, the boy obviously thinks the village people are better. He sees the Kalmuks as so wrong that they are beyond God's love or interest. I think there is somewhat of a difference between the townspeople and the Kalmuks. The townspeople are willing to commit insane acts of violence, but they mostly do it when it comes up in their own lives. The townspeople do their work, maintain their relationships, and focus on survival. When one of those tasks appears to entail committing some act of violence, they do it. They may not actually need to commit these atrocities to survive. However, the Kalmuks seem to seek out and continuously perform violent acts. There is nothing else in their life other than the violence. That does not make the townspeople innocent, but it does separate them in some way from the continuous suffering and destruction that the Kalmuks create. It is easier to 'forgive' the townspeople because we also see them in their daily life. Although we see them act violently, we also know they have families and they have lives of their own. It is much easier to vilify the Kalmuks because we only know of their terrible actions towards townspeople. The line between forgivable and unforgivable changes as we learn about circumstances, and I think that is why the townspeople feel less evil intuitively.
ReplyDelete2. I think love does exist in this world. The most obvious example is Lekh and Ludmilla. Even though I wouldn't classify their relationship as healthy, it seems clear they felt strong feelings for each other. When Ludmilla disappears, Lekh sings songs about her. When Ludmilla died, Lekh "threw himself on the dead woman". He remains beside her the entire night and is "shaken by sobs". His intense reaction to her death seems to indicate that he really cared about her beyond their physical relationship. The boy's parents letting him go off to try to save his life is another instance where characters show love. I think love definitely exists, but the boy does not get to witness a lot of it because he is rarely the recipient.
1. I think it is far better to be a townsperson than it is to be a Kalmuk. The Kalmuks are at the bottom of the soldier pecking order, beneath the Nazis who are German, beneath the Soviets who stayed faithful to their country. They are the manifestation of the hypocrisy of the Nazi mission, because they themselves are not Aryan yet they are killing people for not being Aryan. They are dogs, both because they are kicked by their German superiors and because they behave in a despicable, inhumane manner. We must remember that we are in World War II here, so the laws of society have been uprooted. I don't think that it is forgivable to commit acts like the ones we are reading about in our society. However, these people are desperate. And desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures. The Kalmuks are hated because of the racism/colorism that prevails throughout this world. Even though their actions are arguably comparable to the actions of the townspeople, the Kalmuks are villainized because of the way they look. I don’t think that evil can be quantified because it is so dependable on the circumstances. The boy is a product of his world and his world tells him that dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, equals bad. So of course he will find the Kalmuks worse than the light-colored people of the towns. The other thing we must remember is that the boy knows the townspeople. He sees them as complete human beings as opposed to seeing one snapshot of them committing atrocities. The Kalmuks come in as outside forces and harm the villagers. So the Kalmuks are worse than the villagers because of racism and because of the fact that they are outside entities, not part of the village.
ReplyDelete2. The love of this world is a very different kind of love than what we think of as love. It is a harsh world, a violent world, a world filled with fear and hatred. To me, love is contingent upon two things: kindness and respect. If someone loves another person, they must respect them. They must honor them in all that they are and see them as an equal human being. They must also show kindness; the kindness can only truly come after the respect. I do not think that there is respect in this world. People are too desperate to cling to their own survival to be concerned with others. However, I do think that there is kindness. We see kindness in the German soldier who saves our boy’s life. We see kindness in all of the people who agree to take the boy in (this excludes those who are forced to take him in, namely Garbos). We see kindness in the priest who saves the boy from the German officers. Love presents itself through this kindness. So love definitely exists in our world and it does exist in the world of the book, but it is a different kind of love.
1. I agree with Mira that, for the villagers, violence is more a frequent activity than a way of life. Many of the times that the villagers engage in acts of violence, it is due to a perceived threat to themselves or a broken social norm. For example, they rape and murder Ludmilla because she slept with their husbands and endangered the morality of the town. And the villagers often beat the boy because they feared that he will bring misfortune upon them. Of course, this is no justification, but at least some of the violence amongst the villagers is not completely senseless or self-indulgent. The Kalmuks, however, do not act in self-preservation or to punish infractions. They assault and rape and murder just for the fun of it, simply because they can. The Kalmuks epitomize sadism, while the villagers tend to just have sadistic tendencies. Of course, we only see one side to the Kalmuks. However, I don’t think any hidden side of them could temper the horror of the atrocities they commit. On a different note, I don’t believe that evil can be quantified, but I believe that it can still be relative. I can say with certainty that raping a child is more evil than torturing a squirrel, but I cannot say exactly how much more evil. However, most examples are not as clear cut as this. Are the actions of Garbos more or less depraved than those of a typical Kalmuk? I don’t know. What I do know is that it is tragic that the boy’s only exposure to people who look like himself is the Kalmuks. Up until this point, he had always seemed to view the villagers’ prejudices as somewhat arbitrary, asking himself why the Germans didn’t just dye everyone’s hair blonde. Now, though, all the suspicions and fears of the villagers have been confirmed, and the boy now believes that dark hair is indicative of a deep moral defect or innate evilness. As someone with dark coloring, he feels that the actions of the Kalmuks reflect on his own character, that he shares in responsibility for their misdeeds and depravity.
ReplyDelete2. Evidence of love has been scarce in this book, but not absent. We don’t see many relationships, romantic or platonic, that end well or are without deep fault. You could debate the merits of certain relationships amongst the villagers, but, in my opinion, the clearest evidence of love is found in the actions of Jews being carried by train to concentration camp. Knowing that only death awaits them, they throw their children out of the cars, hoping against hope that the children will survive without them. They leave a trail of letters, documents, and pictures behind, which tell the stories of families, friends, and lovers. Even as these people speed away towards their imminent deaths, they are clearly thinking about their children and other loved ones. So yes, love does exist in this book and in general.
"Hating the Reds, they joined the Germans who permitted them to loot and rape in the manner of their war customs and manly traditions." The Kalmuks are the extreme end of what we have seen throughout the book (though not as extreme as the Germans who have exterminating millions—perhaps taking their customs to their logical ends). We've seen Ludmila raped and murdered; we've seen eyes gouged out; we've seen men devoured by rats; etc etc. I'm thinking about what Mira wrote above, and I can't disagree. There is a difference between the townspeople and the Kalmuks: the Kalmuks are a horde of terror and atrocity, every single thread of human (there we go again with that word) restraint and decency and kindness and compassion abandoned. But I feel like we've seen what they do already in the book, which made it less horrifying and less disgusting. The Kalmuks just take what's happened and make it organized. I don't think, ultimately, they are any different than the townspeople; nor do I think the Russians are any different. Before the Kalmuks die the Russians make sure they suffer horribly. They play with the children. They hang men so that they suffer horribly before they die. And off page, just as we know millions are dying as horribly if not more so in the extermination camps, or in the boxcars going to the camps, or on the side of the tracks where they hoped for mercy and care, the Russians are systematically raping thousands of women—their version of terror bombing as I mentioned in class. Great question, Alice: can evil be quantified? I think Kosinski is saying no. Just my opinion.
ReplyDelete2. Ah, love. Good question. Good quote. Is what's going on between Labina and the man in the quote really as disgusting as the boy thinks it is? I'm not sure: I think it's how sex can be. But how would the boy know this? He remembers the way Ewka treated him as the pinnacle of love. I agree with Mira: Lekh and Ludmila feel strong feelings for each other—is it love? I'm not sure. Where there should be what we think of as love—between married couples, between parents and children, between adults and helpless children—there is some off-kilter if not perverted version of it. Ewka comes to my mind immediately. Can there be love in a universe that is so committed to atrocity? Does love in such a world make one weak, make survival more difficult? If this universe is a rendering of the Auschwitz in the mind, or just the literal Auschwitz, does love have a place there?
I’d say the difference is mostly the scale, and that’s what really makes an impression on the boy, whether or not he’s entirely aware of it. He’s seen murder and torture and angry mobs, but in one way or another all of those were “provoked.” The man gouged out the farmhand’s eyes for looking at his wife. Ludmilla often slept with the village men, and the women hated her for it. The villagers were incensed after he dropped the book in church, and threw him into a pit of feces. There is some reasonable cause and effect here - Garbos? Not so much. His senseless and “unreasonable” brutality caused some considerable confusion to the boy. He experimented, tested, worked and tried again and again to understand the source of Garbos’ beatings, but was left without answers, and ended up finding Garbos more terrifying than other attackers because of it. He’s now seeing senseless brutality on a mass scale, which only magnifies the horror and confusion - this is worse than even Garbos to him, since he decides that even looking like these Kalmuks is enough to justify Garbos’ beatings. We discussed religion as a means of understanding and control in the last chapter - and if we seek understanding and control, then this atrocity came completely out of left field. Of course, the Germans are also committing atrocities on a mass scale, but theirs is more mechanized that this - and to the boy, whose only interactions with Germans were seemingly defined by mercy, and the crisp cleanliness of the officer’s uniform, the evil (and I do believe this is pure, inarguable evil, if there ever was any) perpetrated here by dark-complexioned peoples seems to be the epitome of carnage. Were the perpetrators white people, he wouldn’t have identified all white people as evil - he would have identified this particular group as evil, but it would have stopped there. It is only because of the constant reinforcement of the idea that all dark-complexioned people are evil that the association even comes to mind. Through its senseless nature, mass scale, lack of a “clean” facade, and the incessant reinforcement of racism, the boy sees these people as the worst of the worst. Much of the violence in this book has a cause - to us, likely an unreasonable cause, like the mauling a farm boy for looking at another man’s wife - but to this society, it is reasonable. In this way, maybe the Kalmuks’ behavior is “normal” to other Kalmuks, but it has no clear cause other than intent to harm. It protects no one, it saves no lives, preserves no future - it doesn’t defend a spouse or a resource or do anything at all other than torture. In some aspects, the Townspeople’s violence could be rationalized as “what it takes to survive,” but the Kalmuks’ violence cannot be justified. Evil can be quantified, but I think we need to be mindful that all means we have of defining and quantifying evil will be inextricably based in our own societies, our current knowledge, and our personal beliefs. With that in mind, I would undoubtedly quantify this as evil (far, FAR across the “line”), but I have great difficulty defining the exact line something would have had to cross to be that way.
ReplyDeleteI think love does exist in this world (and certainly in general - I have no doubt about that), but we only see it in the periphery. It seems a side note to life, rather than any sort of significant focus, but that may be because of our narrator. Garbos, terrible though he was, genuinely cared for his sons, and apparently his turtle; Labina loved her husband; the birdcatcher loved Ludmilla; the boy’s own parents loved him enough to let go of him, if it meant his safety (regardless of the tragic outcome). Love creeps in around the edges, and is often expressed by people initially introduced, or later revealed to us as, violent: Garbos constantly attacked the boy, and the bird catcher expressed his anguish by setting up his beloved birds for slaughter. Love is certainly in this book, but it is never far from fear and suffering. They coexist, and occasionally bleed together.
Garbos' desire to kill the boy was evil. Any desire to see another person die without just cause should be considered evil, for if it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to live in such close proximity with other people; we would all be trying to kill each other. But nevertheless, we can understand why Garbos might want to kill the boy. Would you not feel somewhat angry if you lost your children and wife, and the priest forces you to take custody of a raggedy gypsy-like boy who should have died years ago? Add that feeling to all the others the miserable situation the war would impose on Garbos and his neighbors, and some weaker person would surely break. The Kalmuks, however, cross a line. They do not wish to merely kill, they want to torture and to rape in the most depraved ways possible. Their catharsis relies not only on what happens to others, but also on others' emotional anguish and suffering. Their actions cease to be understandable to me, and thus cross the threshold into an irredeemable evil, an unforgivable evil.
ReplyDeleteOf course love exists in this world, most of it is merely on hold. Do you not think of the priest's actions toward the boy as an act of love? Would Labina have married Laba, the poorest worker in the village, if it were not for love? Does love necessarily need to be beautiful? The horrors of this world merely distill most emotions away until only the truest expressions of love and care are left, such as when Lekh throws himself at the mob in an attempt to save Ludmila, or when Labina treats and cares for the boy. Just because these expressions seem unromantic, dirty, or drunkenly encouraged does not meet they are not genuine.
1) It seems like everyone is in agreement that the Kalmuk’s are about as bad as it gets, even when compared to monsters like Garbos. Unlike the villagers and peasants, it seems like their sole reason for existence is to be violent and bring pain to others. The villagers, though they do some horrible things as well, still have to work their farmland or do some type of work in order to survive. Even with Garbos, he went to church and occasionally worked on his farm and with his livestock. It's not as if he existed solely to torture our boy. But even in the initial descriptions of the Kalmuk’s, only two reasons are cited for why they decided to join the Germans: “the Germans…permitted them to loot and rape in the manner of their war customs and manly traditions.” Literally the only reason why they align with the Germans is so that they can loot, rape, and generally be violent people. The most interesting, and sadddest, part to me is that our boy actually respects the Kalmuks at first, before seeing the atrocities they’d eventually commit. “For a moment…I felt great pride and satisfaction. After all, these proud horsemen were black-haired, black-eyed, and dark-skinned.” Before the Kalmuk's arrived, our boy had a pretty good understanding of the concept that his color didn't actually affect anything and it was external forces that caused people to hate those that looked like him. But the Kalmuk's were just so evil that now he's going to contribute darkness with evil, which he's now applying to himself. You can't even blame him either. He doesn't get to see many people who look like him, and when he does, this is what he sees.
ReplyDelete2) I think love exists in this book. I think this book is showing us the consequences human thought and emotion, not just the good side of humans we see in civilized society. But these people are still human – I don't doubt that for a second – and with being human comes the ability to love. I think there have been a few examples as well. Garbos and his son; Leah and Ludmilla; maybe even Laba and Labina. I think you start seeing even more love if you expand your definition past the emotion felt for another person. For example, you could say the Kalmuks love violence. But I don't think that's what you were asking, so I'll leave it alone.
1. I didn't interpret this as the boy trying to quantify evil -- to me it seemed to be a continuation of his identification with the oppressor. Even the the boy sees himself in the Kalmuks, saying "[he] felt great pride and satisfaction...these proud horsemen were black-haired, black-eyed and dark-skinned," he ultimately allies himself with the villagers that hate him and turns against the Kalmuks. Now its a little more nuanced than that; the Kalmuks committed some of the worst atrocities of this book so it seems logical that the boy would regret his earlier association with them. Yet to me, the death of Ludmila or the raping of Ewka aren't necessarily much different -- except for that the Kalmuks committed all of their atrocities at once, while Ewka's father and brother spread them out. I think Kosinski is saying evil cannot be quantified; is it really better to rape someone with a goat 10 times over 2 years than to rape an entire village at once? However, the boy still internalizes these images of himself, thinking that he will never be as good as pure whiteness. And we can't blame him, there might be something just horrible about viewing all of these things happen at once. It is just tragic though to see him start to hate himself.
ReplyDelete2. Well, I guess the question I would ask back is what is love? Is love Lekh going out into the forest every day looking for Ludmila? Is it the Jews throwing their children off the train to try and save them from imminent death? Is it Labina and her lover? Labina and her husband? Ewka and the boy? For me, the word love has the connotation of being somewhat above just sex, its about a connection between two people. In that case, all of the above examples could be love. Or they could just be a way for characters to get out their feelings, their bottled up emotions about this horrible world -- like the rape of the Jewish girl by Rainbow, or Garbos' torment of Ewka. Or just pure survivalism with everyone trying to find a mate. Ultimately, I think it is extremely unclear and open to interpretation. Each example could go either way, depending on how you see the rest of the book.
1. He has been told over and over again that dark haired dark eyed people are evil. This is his first interaction with people who look like himself since age five or so, and they mete out the most concentrated episode of violence yet seen. Though individual acts aren't necessarily worse than things he has seen done before, there are a two notable differences. Firstly, as I said earlier, he has been conditioned to think of them as evil, so this confirms it in his mind. Second, it is violence for the sake of violence. They have no justification, and the villagers always had some justification, though sometimes not a good one. They commit atrocities for fun, compete with each other, and make a game of it. They show off. Our boy has seen horrible things, but he has never seen anyone revel in violence alone. Evil is a slippery thing, but to our boy, this day defines it.
ReplyDelete2. Garbos would not have beaten our narrator if there was not love in this world. He may be misguided, but he does it out of anger at the loss of his sons, whom he loved. Aside from this, we see that there is most definitely hate. He and other villagers are willing to put themselves at risk with no chance of personal gain to hurt other people. Despite unstable lives, they'll put themselves at risk based on an opinion of another person. If this is possible out of hate, it is also possible through love.
1. The boy definitely thinks that the Kalmuks are worse than the villagers, I think the fact that he sees himself in the Kalmuks makes it worse for him. I'd imagine that he judges them harsher because of that very fact. I do think that the Kalmuks are more veil than the villagers and that may partly be because we haven't gotten to see any other side of them like we did with the villagers. That being said, I think that the villagers although not as evil, are worse. I say this because the Kalmuks basically exist to commit all this evil, but if that's the case and the villagers who don't exist to do so still commit acts of violence, then there is nothing for the boy or anyone else in that world to hold onto. They should be the ones to do better because they have the capacity to do so, something I don't see in the Kalmuks. I can understand that some villagers were just trying to survive and protect themselves but villagers like Garbos are no better than. The Kalmuks.
ReplyDelete2. I think love exists in this world but isn't highlighted as much as all the bad. Lekh and ludmilla, I think love each other or at the very least have strong feelings for each other but even that means that they have the capacity to love. I would consider the officer letting the boy run instead of killing him was love. It wasn't specifically love for the boy, but love for humanity.
1. When I first read this chapter, I thought that the boy was revering the Kalmuks due to their positions of power, despite their darker coloring. Considering this, I thought it was a contradiction to some earlier thoughts the boy had expressed about (specifically that one scene where he almost wishes for his own death in the face of a German officer). Going with this thought process, it seems as if the boy is only concerned with what will get him the most power in this world, because he knows that that will provide him with the best life. When comparing the Kalmuks to the villagers, the Kalmuks have the power to destroy, to incite fear, and to do what they want. Compared with the fear of the villagers, they do not have to worry or be frightened because they have the control. I think the boy realizes the benefits of a situation like this, and I think he does respect the Kalmuks, if only for a moment: “For a moment, as I looked at them, I felt great pride and satisfaction. After all, these proud honest men were black-haired, black-eyed, and dark-skinned. They differed from the people of the village as night from day. The arrival of these dark Kalmuks drove the fair-haired village people almost insane with fear” (176). I think a part of the boy wants the village people to feel the type of fear he has felt because of people like them. However, I do think that this point contradicts the quote Alice mentioned in her question, where it seems like the boy is resenting his looks (and the Kalmuks’) again because of where it has placed him in this world. Ultimately, the Germans have the power to destroy even the Kalmuks, and all of the darker-toned people. I find it hard to determine whether evil can be quantified. I think sometimes acts that seem more ‘evil’ can produce less pain than a less evil act (depending, of course, on the acts and the people involved). In this way, it is hard to quantify evil because I think it has to do with how a certain evil affects people, even if objectively one may seem worse than another. And I tend to think that each situation is different. This also has to do with something the boy says a little later on in the book, regarding revenge: “It was quite simple: if someone was rude to you and it hurt you like a whiplash, you should punish him as though he had lashed you with a whip. If someone slapped you and it felt like a thousand blows, take revenge for a thousand blows” (214).
ReplyDelete2. I certainly think that love exists in this world, both in the novel and in general. Whether the boy himself is subject to distinct acts of love is a different question, I think, and I think this does shape his experience. I think that the boys mentalities and reactions to the experiences he observes or faces are shaped by the lack of affection, acceptance, and love shown to him. For example, when he looks into a German officer’s face and would understand his own death because of the way he looks. This boy has been taught to devalue his own life. I also think that as readers, the sadness of this boy’s life is sharpened because we do know that love exists in the world, so I think it’s even worse that this boy doesn’t really experience that (as far as he can remember) in his childhood, or as he ‘comes of age’. I can’t recall anyone that the boy has stayed with, excepting his parents (ironically) sending him away in hope of a better life, which we don’t even see and are just told about, ever showing him love or true, pure kindness just for who he is. But we know that people are capable of this, perhaps even the people who accept to taking this boy on in their homes. What is made worse for the reader is that the boy is never subject to this love, despite its existence in this world.
1. The actions of the Kalmuks seemed more evil to me than the actions of the villagers. However, I’m not sure that this is the case because we have been only seeing the actions of the villagers through the eyes of the boy. I’m thinking that the boy has only been able to see a small fraction of the atrocities that occur on a daily basis in these villages, so we really have no idea of the other atrocities that are almost without a doubt being committed without the boy’s knowledge. However, I don’t think comparing the actions of the villagers and the Kalmuks makes much sense because I don’t think evil is quantifiable. Evil not being quantifiable has been one of the main points I’ve taken from the book. The atrocities happening to this boy and to the people around him are an infinitesimally small fraction of the atrocities happening throughout the world and during the Holocaust. Trying to imagine all these atrocities is impossible for our minds. And for this reason I think evil cannot be quantified, and I think the book makes this clear.
ReplyDelete2. Evidence of love does exist in the world of this book. Love might have had a role in explaining why the soldier let the boy go. It might have been a basic love and respect for fellow members of his species that compelled him to allow the boy to run into the woods. But its definitely a stretch to call that love. Could it have been love that made the boy’s parents send him off into the countryside in the first place? Could it have been love that made the Jews on the train throw their children onto the tracks with the hope that they would survive or at least not have to suffer any longer? I’m really not sure if Lech and Ludmila were in love, but I think that's definitely the closest thing we’ve seen to a romantic love. So in conclusion, I’m very hopeful that there is love in this book and in this world and maybe there have been brief moments of love but I have not seen anything yet that I am sure is love.
1. I think they're equally terrible and evil. Like we pointed out in class, they both did some awful things and crossed lines I didn't think humans were capable of crossing. For example, when the Kalmuks raped the five year old girl, I was horrified, but then I was reminded of some of the other disgusting things the villagers did. Like the way the village women beat Ludmila to death because they didn't like how attracted their husbands were to her. The way both groups of people act and live seems almost unnatural because of how unaffected they are by their own actions. It's so normalized to do such awful things to treat other people in such terrible ways. I think evil isn't quantifiable and I think it really goes down to the mindsets of these people. Their inability to recognize and/or care about the things they do to other people is almost inhuman. It astonishes me how Kosinski is able to write such things but it also makes me reflect on the evil in our world and how the mentalities he's presenting in this book was - and still is - very apparent in our society.
ReplyDelete2. I think love exists but in ways were not used to looking at it. Love in the village might be presented as self-interest or as lust or as throwing your child off a train in hopes that they'll either die or find a better life. Love in this book is distorted by the strain put on the villagers survival. Had they been able to live easier lives maybe the love might be more similar to the love we're familiar with, but the distrust and evil contorts this simple emotion into something entirely different. Maybe there isn't love for one and other, but there might be love seen in their desire to keep living despite the horrible environment they're forced to live in.