The passage extracted from Chapter one of If This is a Man depicts the journey and eventual arrival of Levi and his other companions to Auschwitz, a concentration camp. The journey is one that is painful, it is a descent into hell. At the beginning of the passage, Levi writes that his ‘women…parents…children disappeared.’ He used listing to introduce a tense atmosphere that draws the readers’ attention and become emotionally engaged to his journey. For Levi, the loss of family felt as though it happened ‘in an instant.’ Time is an important metaphor that conveys the concept that all external connections of these people who are about to enter the death camps are robbed from them, this is merely the first step towards the degradation of humanity.
In the place of their families are ‘two groups of strange individuals.’ This suggests that the past is gone, the pasts of these Jewish people are erased, instead they must adapt to the harsh new environment which will be there future. These seemingly odd individuals represent the future of the Jews. They are machine-like, their identity is taken away from them, they are simply ‘filthy’ and completely unaware of their ‘odd, [embarrassing] step’ and ‘comic berets.’ The Jews did not know their fate, yet their instinct tells them that this is the ‘metamorphosis’ that awaits them.
Language is incapable of describing such conditions, of such horrific human conditions. Levi attempts to describe almost all the details of the journey to the death camp to allow the readers to gain an insight into the horrible situation that the Jewish people face. It is almost a fascination, yet a fear of an impending death and the unknown. There is little verbal communication no talk of the future, barely any of the present. The first mention of ‘tomorrow’ refers to their partial understanding that their souls will be diminished and their individualities will be taken away, just like the ‘strange individuals…[climbing] in and out of the empty wagons’ almost mechanically. Even this provides the Jews with hope, a hope of the possibility of survival and it this that they cling onto for the duration of the journey.
As the people are ‘loaded onto a lorry,’ Levi’s adopts shorter sentences to give us a sense of increasing agitation and worry. The Jews are prevented from ‘[seeing the] outside.’ Levi repetitively states this, describing the night as ‘a thick darkness.’ Darkness is a symbol, it is a representation of the blockage of knowledge. It acts as a wall that separates the known and the unknown, of the normal lives of the people towards the potential degradation of their physical and mental state. Without being able to see, despair soon arises amongst the people, Levi uses rhetorical questions to portray internal conflict. This is created due to fear and wariness of the peoples’ unknown fate. They knew that it was ‘too late, too late,’ that they are ‘all “down.”’ Repetition is used here to suggest a loss of hope, it is the beginning of the descent into hell. But being human, they cannot help but to question their fate, it is the fundamental in human nature to hold onto life, it is a fight against survival.
Some moments later, Levi writes that the German solder ‘switches on a pocket torch.’ This faint little light source, once against fills the Jews with hope. This sudden transition provides them with a faint optimism. Combined with ‘a small private initiative’ of the German soldier, the Jews are ‘[stirred] to anger and laughter.’ The co-existence of emotions is the first mention of feelings beside fear. It relieves not only the Jews, but also the readers. This ‘private initiative’ is inherent in human nature. It is the first exposure to such primitive nature of human that Levi allows us to understand that the men are more than just as part of a mass; they are individuals. Here, it is the second time something is taken away from the people. This time, it is their personal belongings ‘money [and] watches.’ This is another piece of their uniqueness robbed, yet it is so minor compared to the relief of being able to stay alive that it is negligible and instead, brings about hope.
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