Heroic Character In Survival In Auschwitz: If This Is A Man

Heroic character in survival in Auschwitz: If this is a man

If this is a man is a testimony written by Primo Levi between 1945 and 1947, published in 1947, about his stay in the Nazi concentration camp of Auswitch. In his work, Primo Levi does not delve so much in the massacre or in the suffering suffered there, but prefers to deepen much more in the most inhuman aspect of the work: as a man is able to snatch another indication of humanity to another. Primo Levi focuses especially on the dehumanization process that he and all those who passed there had to suffer.Levi tells his stay in Monowitz, one of the Auswitch concentration camps, since his internment in 1944. 

According to what Levi tells us, that place was a horrifying combination of misery, injustice, evil and suffering, where surviving was a matter of luck. The descriptions of the forced labor that prisoners were forced to make, of the punishments to which they were subjected and their life status are so spooky that it is really surprising to see them narrated so disappassed, so objectively. As Levi himself explains to us in his book, his story of the facts does not include atrocious details about the fields of destruction, but provides us with documentation for a serene study of certain aspects of the human soul. 

Levi is able to describe with great precision that process that little by little, although with extreme efficiency, deprives human beings of their status as men and that dehumanizes them.

The methods that the Germans used to dehumanize the Jews who were there were very careful, very ordered, and therefore absolutely spooky;The atmosphere that the Nazis had created in the fields was really inhuman and the best way to testify about such a thing was not from their personal perspective, but from the perspective of the group itself. To do something like that, in much of his narration Levi set aside everything that was his own (ideas, beliefs, personal preferences, emotions, etc.) to achieve universality, which is why at no time he shows resentment orI hate their oppressors;This Thomas Nagel was called the "point of view of nowhere". 

One of the narrative aspects that most attracts attention to this is a man is the lack of a heroic record, something that, taking into account the context of the work, would have been very easy to have. The objectivity that Levi contributes to his narration is born from a need to, as he tells us on page 7 of the book, "talk to others, to make others suppose" what happened there. As I mentioned in my reflection, the testimonial literature (literary genre to which this work belongs) has a clear historical limitation because the reader in general tends to extrapolate the personal situation and suffering of an individual and attribute it to the rest of the individuals thatThey went through the same circumstances;The fact that Levi’s intention was precisely to denounce before the world the atrocities through which the human being had to pass in that place prevented him from narrating only from his own point of view, and it was precisely said limitation of testimonial reading that whichforced him to narrate from objectivism and without heroic elements. 

Yes, Levi would have narrated his story and his personal experience, the work would have had the presence of a heroic character, a character who would have been able to survive all those atrocities due to various circumstances, but that would not have done to othersKnowing what really happened in the fields, that would not have satisfied Levi’s internal need, so it could be said that it was that need that prevented him from including heroic elements in his testimony, and since to meet this need it was necessary to express theActs as objectively as possible, it was not feasible to include heroic elements and much less a heroic character in his testimony. So, the lack of a heroic character itself is a man is actually due to the author’s need to express the facts as objectively as possible;Due to the objectivism contributed by the author, the presence of heroic elements itself is a man is zero.