Fermin Hernandez
Ms. M
10/24/10
Dialectal Journal
1. Quote: " All that mattered was that one's own name and that of one's friend were crossed of the list of victims, although everyone knew that for each man saved another victim had to be found" - pg. 4
Response: Even though they manage to save themselves from being killed, they would still feel the guilt of killing somebody for saving themselves. So even though they manage to make it out, they sell someone else’s fate. I would hate to make such a decision where the other person would have to lose their own life for me to live a couple more weeks at most.
2. Quote: " We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles-whatever one may choose to call them-we know: the best of us did not return" - pg. 6
Response: Even though some of the prisoners did return home they didn’t come back the same. My interpretation of this quote is that they’re free but they didn’t come back how they went it. They left a part of themselves in there. So they would never be the same anymore. It seemed that they left they’re better side in there and came back with nothing but negatively towards them. Just like the author he doesn’t seem to happy now after it all happened.
3. Quote: " Thus, when we saw a comrade smoking his own cigarettes, we knew he had given up faith in his strength to carry on, and, once lost, the will to live seldom returned" - pg. 8
Response: At least before they give up they can finally relax. They must’ve seen a lot of people smoking their last cigarette before they died away. I wonder how he would feel smoking his last cigarette? Prisoners must of struggled to get to this point and fight the urge to not give up. But who can blame them in the situation they are in. It would be hard not to give up when they don’t have a for sure answer if they will make it out alive in the end. But the one’s who didn’t give up must have been really brave in the end to face out of it alive.
4. Quote: " Two hours before I had spoken to that man. Now I continued sipping my soup" - pg. 23
Response: I wonder how he would feel knowing that someone he knew and talked to got killed not to long after that. It must of been normal for them to lose inmates just like that. They must have seen this multiple times for them to actually react like that and act like it was nothing to them. I don’t think I can just act like nothing when someone I know dies like that. After knowing someone and then dying, I can’t react like that no matter ho many times I see it happening.
5. Quote: " Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to attract the attention of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it" - pg. 24
Response: How they were treated would make situation much worse then they already are. Making them feel inferior to them and just throwing rocks at them like animals. Who does that? In their heads it must of made them feel the low like they’re lives mean nothing anymore. That they’re fate is sealed and they are destined to die. It just depends how brutal they will go. But even then, they shouldn’t of been treated so badly when they’re on they’re last weeks of being alive.
6. Quote: " Well another day" - pg. 28
Response: I don’t understand how they can just say it like that without feeling anything. Knowing that tomorrow they might not have the same luck as they do to make it out. I don’t know how a person can react like that. Makes me wonder how I would deal in a camp like they did. Reading the book from his perspective got me a better understanding of how the prisoners lived day to day. Even though in the book he didn’t describe what we usually hear about them in the prisons it was still as bad knowing how and what they went to and how they thought about the situation. In my opinion that’s way worse.
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