Is Rosa crazy? Absolutely. It is not possible to destroy a successful business and thereby your livelihood, move to Miami so that you may live in a life of squalor all the while praying for the arrival of a shawl, which by the way you believe to be magic in that it sustains life for days and is somehow an embodiment of your niece, whom you view as your daughter, who has been deceased for decades. If someone can read this story and not gain the impression that Rosa is a bit off mentally, then they recognize a different definition of the word crazy then most.
Rosa moves to Miami after smashing up her antique store in New York as a way of both lashing out against those who do not understand the suffering she had to endure back in Poland but also because she wanted to escape from her evil and almost devil-like niece Stella. Almost completely normal if you take out the, my niece is evil in the flesh bit. It is also incredibly hypocritical of Rosa to claim that Stella was responsible for Magda’s death. Had Stella ran after her daughter not only would Stella still be dead but she too would have shared in Magda’s tragic fate, this false choice that Rosa believes Stella had is nearly identical to the same false choice that Rosa had during the march to the camp. Rosa could have stepped out of line and attempted to give Magda away to a stranger but she was able to reason in her mind that it would only result in the deaths of both of them and that therefore she would not attempt to save her life because it would be in vain.
So why should Rosa not blame herself equally for Magda’s death as she blames Stella? It can only be because she is being a hypocrite and treating her niece who also had to endure the hell that was the Holocaust along with her for not jumping into that electric fence alongside her daughter.
No comments:
Post a Comment