Cynthia Ozick's Short Story the Shawl

Cynthia Ozick's short story "The Shawl" is a masterful work recounting an almost unspeakably horrible time in world history. The story takes place in the middle of World War II in Nazi Germany. The lead character, Rosa, is a Jewish woman trying to flee from a terrible fate in a concentration camp with her two daughters, the infant, Magda and the teenager, Stella. Rosa, tired and weary from the endless flight, and her daughters, malnourished and weak, all continue on until they reach a place to sleep for the night. Magda, whose shawl is a source of comfort for her, loses the shawl one night in her sleep to her sister Stella. The baby, who has not said a word for days, howls and goes outside the barrack in search of her shawl. Rosa immediately wakes to find her daughter howling outside near a concentration camp looking for her shawl. She runs outside and runs back into the barrack to get the shawl in an attempt to lure Magda back into the relative safety of the barrack. The attempt fails though, and Magda is discovered by a Nazi soldier and is killed, thrown into an electric fence.

Now, this story by itself is very compelling and heart-wrenching. It is almost a primal instinct in humans to have compassion for our fellow man. The previous description only described setting though, and did not delve much into other aspects of the story. However, it is in this reader's opinion that the aspect of the story that makes it so lasting and memorable is not just the situation that these characters are placed in, but also the method of storytelling that Ozick used. The previous paragraph discusses the plot of "The Shawl," but it does not describe it in the way that makes this story so great. Cynthia Ozick strategically placed a great deal of imagery into the story in order to achieve various wanted effects. In "The Shawl", Ozick weaves significant details in the setting to create visions of death and suffering, human worth, and survival.

The very first line of "The Shawl" is also the story's very first use of imagery. "Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell (Ozick 3)." This first sentence sets the tone for a grim and harrowing story. By comparing the coldness of the outside weather to hell, Ozick emphasizes the nightmare that entraps Rosa and her children. Also in the next paragraph, Rosa is described as "not like someone walking but like someone in a faint, in trance, arrested in a fit, someone who is already a floating angel, alert and seeing everything, but in the air, not there, touching the road (Ozick 4)." The "in a faint, in trance" shows Rosa's undying determination, even though it appears as if the determination is the only thing keeping her alive. The "floating angel" shows that Rosa has already partially died and is weak from the struggle. Finally, the "alert and seeing everythingÐ'...touching the road" line emphasizes her separation from her own situation in an attempt to deal with it while still worrying about the very real fears of the Nazi regime after her.

Stella is another character painted in a certain light by Ozick who, had different imagery been used, could have come off to the reader as a different person. To Rosa, and to the readers, Stella is seen almost as a jealous and obsessive person toward her sister. Stella, however, is also seen as still a teenager, a phase in life wherein the worlds of childhood and adulthood clash and confuse everybody. In the first sentence of "The Shawl," Stella "wanted to be wrapped in a shawl, hidden away, asleep, rocked by the march, a baby, a round infant in arms (Ozick 3)." In this line, Ozick shows the reader that Stella is a girl caught up in a mess she does not want to be in. It also shows the classic longing of any human being under stress to revert to a more calming and fond place in their past.

Later in the story, Stella takes the shawl away from Magda, claiming she was cold (Ozick 6). The next line reads "And afterward she was always cold, always. The cold went into her heart: Rosa saw that Stella's heart was cold." The "cold" in this case is not the physical cold Stella was feeling, but rather the cold a person develops when there is nobody to care for them, the cold that develops when a fight has gone on for too long. Rosa was not the only one tired from fleeing. Not having had sustenance for days, Stella too was feeling weary. The girl was also jealous of Magda, since Rosa had paid so much attention to her and kept her wrapped in the shawl. In situations like this, many revert to behavior that best keeps them alive, regardless of the consequences, and this is what Stella was going through. Stella reacted in a rather common manner to her stress with her anger, frustration, and carelessness ("Some Negative Effects of Stress"). The imagery Ozick used in or!

der to paint a picture of the Stella character makes the reader sympathize with her, but also keeps the emphasis somewhat off of her