Silence by Tadeusz Borowski
Literature Review
Silence by Tadeusz Borowski
Tadeusz Borowski was a Polish journalist and writer born in 1922. He is famous for his wartime stories, and poetry have been a survivor of the Nazi Concentration Camps in Poland. Having been a prisoner since 1942 in Auschwitz, he went through tough times under Nazi SS supervision, including forced labor and beatings (Borowski, 2007). He and other prisoners were rescued from the Nazi camps by American soldiers in the spring of 1945. After the rescue, Borowski continued to write his experiences in the Concentration Camps. One of those experiences is “Silence.” The short story’s primary purpose is to educate people and inform them of the camp’s last day when the Americans arrived to rescue the prisoners. Borowski and some of his friends seized the opportunity to have some SS officers pay for their sins.
The topic of the story “Silence” may look ironic in a situation where the prisoners were being freed from the Nazi atrocities. Someone will expect them to be rejoicing and celebrating all over the camp, but Borowski portrays a state of silence in the camp to show the tense moment when the Americans arrived and his hunger for revenge (Cesarani & Sundquist, 2011). He was in a revenge mood, and any noise could have ruined their revenge plans. To educate the audience about the power of revenge, he had to use silence as a tool. The prisoners had dreamed for such a day when their lives would be rescued from hell, but they also wanted to see their tormentors get punished. In one of the camp’s blocks, the American soldiers speak to the prisoners about their freedom and how the SS soldiers will be punished under the law. As he speaks, some prisoners raise their voice to inform the American soldiers that some SS officers were still hiding around. “Shut up! Can’t you wait a little longer?” Now listen to what the American has to say,” one of the prisoners shouted (Borowski, 1971). This means that they should maintain silence, which was more important than making noise.
The tone of revenge in the story reflects the basic set up of the educative motive of Borowski’s narration. When the Americans arrived to liberate the camp, Borowski and some of his fellow prisoners noticed an SS officer trying to climb over the wall and escape from the camp. He wrote, “In absolute silence, they pulled him down to the floor and panting with hate dragged him into a dark alley. Here, closely surrounded by a silent mob, they began tearing at him with greedy hands” (Borowski, 1971). The officer had to pull him down in silence because if they made noise, they would have alerted the American soldiers who would definitely save the officer’s life. The prisoners wanted vengeance for the brutality they had experienced in the camp, and that specific officer was going to be the object on which they would direct all their wrath.
Borowski used metaphors and similes to pass his message to the audience. In the story, he states the conditions of the prisoners just before the arrival of the Americans and how the state of the kitchen where they were preparing food. “…with steam that liquefied along the ceiling beams and fell on the men, the bunks and the food in large, heavy drops, like autumn rain” (Borowski, 1971). The use of such figurative language makes the message of the story sync to the audience. He also narrates his story blankly without censoring his works. Towards the end of the story, he explains how, after the Americans left the adjacent blocks how the retrieved the SS officer from bunk where he was smothered and ganged with dirty blankets. They dragged him on the ground where the prisoners trampled him to death.
The story educates the audience on revenge for the bad things that people do to others. If you are in a position of power, you should not persecute people because waves turn, and you might find yourself begging for mercy. The use of dialogue in the story makes the audience to travel back in time to the Concentration Camp and experience the situation with the prisoners. This enables a reader to understand the story in-depth makes it look like it is happening in the present.
Giribala by Mahasweta Devi
Mahasweta Devi was an Indian writer of fiction in Bengali, born in 1926. She was also a socio-political activist who fought for the rights and empowerment of the tribal people (Amin, 2020). During her life, she authored many stories and received awards for some of her best works, including Rudali, Giribala, and Aranyer Adhikar. Most of her literary works are based on Indians traditions, which were against the rights of Women. Her short story, Giribala, is one of those stories which reveals the brutality of the Indian culture on women. The story is mainly educative and tries to show how men have dominated Indian society. They have power over the women, and whatever they decide, women have to follow. The story is centered on Giribala, a 14-year girl who was sold in marriage by his father for money.
Throughout the story, Devi is trying to show the world how the women in Indian culture are used as a commodity for an exchange where the men decide their fate. She states that “A daughter born. To husband or death. She’s already gone” (Devi, 2012). This tells the audience that a daughter has no place in her home. Once a girl is born, the father starts to plan how much wealth he should rip from her during marriage and not how he can educate his daughter to become a prominent person in the society. Devi allows the audience to witness how women’s reproductive bodies have been made a political ground for resistance and social activism against the masculine structure of power. This power has enabled men to subject women to years of impoverishment, gender brutality, and injustices.
The injustices against women are proved in the educative short story “Giribala,” who gets married to Aulchand, a very abusive husband. The marriage between the two was like a property exchange where Aulchand pays a heifer and eighty rupees to Giribala’s father to have her as a wife. During the dowry payment, the audience witnesses the two men bargain about the ‘commodity’ like some clothes in the market. Devi tries to show how women in Indian societies have been diminished to sellable products where the buyer can bargain with the seller like in an open market.
A scenario happens during the fourth birth of Giriballa, where she asks the doctor to sterilize her. The request leads to the questioning of birth control, which Aulband is against. She had given birth to a child, and she knew “having a daughter only means raising slaves for others” (Devi, 2012). Here Devi puts it clear that women are taken as slaves in the society to be used by their husbands. Giribala’s reason for asking for sterilization is that she chooses to impede her reproduction system from patriarchal control in the unfair society. By doing this, her uterus would be a permanent strike against patriarchal intrusion in a nation where the value of a daughter is a disposable second skin (Gnanaprakasam, 2018).
Giribala’s daughter is married off at 12 years, making her another victim of societal injustices. Ailchand receives 400 rupees in exchange for his daughter. The authorities do little to help young Bela as they blame the father for his action. They neither rescue her nor arrest the father; after all, Bela is just a girl. Devi states that society views a girl as a father’s property until married, and the mother can make no decision about her. Girls are just objects to be bartered and exchanged as instruments of sexual labor. The audience would have expected the authorities to take actions against these injustices, but they are silent on the issues happening in the society. Through her literary work and mastery of language, Devi exposes the rot in society and uses the feminist principles to critique the male-dominated society (Amin, 2020).
Giribala has been used to show the audience how oppressive the socio-political apparatus act within the community to bind ladies to their status, ‘disposable second skin’ who are used to service the men’s sex machine (Gnanaprakasam, 2018). The collaboration between the society and women leaves them with no hopes as they continue to suffer the societal injustices.
References
Amin, P. (2020). Marginalized Women’s Culture in Mahasweta Devi’s work. Studies in Indian Place Names, 40(3), 5590-5595.
Borowski, T. (2007). Postal indiscretions: the correspondence of Tadeusz Borowski. Northwestern University Press.
Borowski, T. (1971). Silence.
Cesarani, D., & Sundquist, E. J. (Eds.). (2011). After the Holocaust: challenging the myth of silence. Routledge.
Devi, M. (2012). Giribala.
Gnanaprakasam, V. (2018). Crumbled Voices of Marginalized Women in Mahasweta Devi’s Giribala. Language in India, 18(7).