Imagination and the Holocaust Essay -- Exploratory Essays Research Pap

Imagination and the HolocaustThe great secret of morals is fuck or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively he must put himself in the place of another and of many others the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of rime I believe that truly humane learning cant help but expand the constricted boundaries of human sympathy, of social tolerance. Maybe the truest thing to be state about racism is that it represents a profound failure of imagination.-- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Integrating the American Mind The imagination and the ability to empathize with others is the key to alive a wider life, a key to escaping the prison of a limited self. But, imagination and identification are also menacing. As we read and listen to the words of survivors, as we study the Holoca ust from all points of view, our imaginations threaten us. As I pick up Elie Wiesels novel Night, I take the Holocaust in my hands, and I perk up childrens voices in the dark. I am afraid for them and for myself. First, I am afraid my imagination will fail me, and I will be overwhelmed. The terror and abasement of the Holocaust may so numb me that I will go into shock. I will isolate myself, deny everything -- suffering, empathy, mercy, family, God. I will experience what Wiesel undergo when his father was struck and he did nothing (36-37), or, in the end, I will abandon my father. Wiesel says to me, I awoke on January 29 at dawn. In my fathers place arrange another invalid. They must have taken him away before dawn an... ...elling and the Journey to Wholeness. New York Bantam, 1992. Pagis, Dan. Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car. verity and Lamentation Stories and Poems on the Holocaust. Eds. Milton Teichman and Sharon Leder. Urbana and Chicago U of Illinois P, 1994. 491. Roder, Thomas, Voller Kubillus and Anthony Burwell. Psychiatrists -- the Men Behind Hitler. Los Angeles Freedom Publishing, 1995. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. A Defense of Poetry. In English Romantic Writers. Ed. David Perkins. New York Harcourt, Brace, 1967. 1072-087. Weinberg, Jeshajahu and Rina Elieli. The Holocaust Museum in Washington. New York Rizzoli, 1995. Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Stella Rodway. New York Bantam Books, 1960. - - -. Why I Write Making No Become Yes. The Essay Connection. 4th ed. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom. Lexington, Massachusetts D. C. Heath, 1995. 40-47.