Deciphering the Silence of Postwar American Jewry: Cynthia Ozick's <i>The Shawl</i>

CHEN Shuping

doi:10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214405

Volume 4 Issue 4

Dec. 2022

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CHEN Shuping. Deciphering the Silence of Postwar American Jewry: Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2021, 4(4): 678-698. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214405

Citation:

CHEN Shuping. Deciphering the Silence of Postwar American Jewry: Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2021, 4(4): 678-698. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214405

CHEN Shuping. Deciphering the Silence of Postwar American Jewry: Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2021, 4(4): 678-698. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214405

Citation:

CHEN Shuping. Deciphering the Silence of Postwar American Jewry: Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2021, 4(4): 678-698. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214405

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Deciphering the Silence of Postwar American Jewry: Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl

doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214405

CHEN Shuping^,

Sun Yat-sen University

Received Date: 2020-12-21
Accepted Date: 2021-06-09

Abstract

Abstract

Silence is a crucial topic in Holocaust studies, and the response of American Jews to the Holocaust immediately after the Second World War remains a polemical issue. The Jewish American female writer Cynthia Ozick and her representative The Shawl perform a positive act of breaking the postwar silence. Due to religious, historical, and socio-political reasons, American Jews have been accused of collective Holocaust amnesia in the postwar era. Ozick has also undergone the transition from shunning the Holocaust to confronting the event steadfastly. As Ozick's "literary manifesto" of breaking the silence, The Shawl offers the panorama of the imagined Holocaust survivor-Rosa Lublin's traumatic life before, during, and after the Holocaust based on the thematic topic of silence.Lawrence Langer's concept of "preempting" the Holocaust is transplanted to offer the conceptual basis for reconsidering the historical context of postwar America and reevaluating the ethics of Holocaust representation. "Preempting" the Holocaust refers to gestures that take advantage of the Holocaust as a humanistic lesson to achieve moral redemption and to promote higher values. Ozick, inheriting the Jewish doctrine of Zakhor, the midrashic style of narrative, and the Hasidic legend of "pure intention," manages to contrive her own writing strategies for Holocaust representation without falling into the wrong path of "preempting" this unprecedented calamity in human history.
- silence,
- postwar American Jewry,
- Cynthia Ozick,
- The Shawl,
- Lawrence Langer,
- preempt,

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References(34)

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