Analytical essay on Primo Levi’s “If This Is a Man” Essay

best Levis book of rate If This Is a humans is a novel about a German intentness camp, champion among many novels on the same subject. However, this book is exceptional as Levi neer raises his voice, complains, or attributes blame. If This Is a piece of music is an objective reputation told in a detached sprightliness using scientific language, which sometimes makes this book not a confession but an analysis. Nevertheless, distant tone and philosophical language bring the horrifying message across with level greater impact on readers.The saddest, the most powerful, and the most ironic chapter of the book is the primordial ninth chapter, called The Drowned and the Saved. Here the authors talent as well as his training as chemist comes through in unique manner. Instead of telling the story, Levi analyses the reasons, the methods, and the effects of German concentration camps. The go forth is more like an essay or even lab business relationship rather than a part of a nov el. The diction of the chapter is sharply contrasted with its content, emphasise the tremendous events described.Already the first prison term of the chapter (What we have so utmost said and forget say concerns the ambiguous sustenance of the Lager. P. 102) reveals a lot. This sentence is the first step in building up the emotionless tone through technical diction. The first person point of view utilise throughout foregoing chapters is suddenly replaced by the pronoun we as it is used in official documents. With every following sentence, the dryness of expression grows gradually To this movement we feel that we have to reply in the affirmative. (p. 102), the Lager was presumably a gigantic biological and social experiment. (p. 102), But another detail seems to us worthy of attention (p. 103).Read AlsoAnalytic Rubric for evidenceThe impact of language is reinforced by the coordinate of the chapter. As Primo Levi names the Lager to be an experiment, he writes his analysis of the reasons and effects of the concentration camp in the form of a lab report. One buttocks clearly distinguish sound outment of purpose, method statement, hypothesis, observations, conditions, and conclusion all the of the essence(predicate) parts of a lab report. However, as said before the detachedness of the structure is in sharp contrast with the content. For example, the methodstatement (Thousands of individuals are enfold within barbed wire on that point they live a regular, controlled life which is identical for all and inadequate to all unavoidably p. 102) describes plainly and understatedly terrifying conditions of the camp.Levi does not complain, he just says that the conditions are inadequate to all needs but the underestimation brings the message across more powerfully, especially when compared to previous chapters. Similarly, the author writes And one must take into account a clear cushioning effect exercised both by the justice, and by the moral state whic h constitutes a self-imposed law (p. 103), a statement, describing the conditions of the experiment, implying that there is no law or sense of morality in the camps. However, yet again, there are no protests or grumbles, and the reader has to find the meaning can buoy the statement himself.Variables in the experiment are two categories of men the save and the drowned. Sudden change of tone from official to poetic and back to official is used to accentuate the difference among the prisoners, to bring it across for the reader that in the Lager the only choice was either to travel or to die. Everyone struggles to survive and in this brutal exertion, all means are justified. If some nugatory Achtzehn vacillates, he will find no one to extend a helping hand on the contrary, someone will knock him parenthesis (p. 103). With this line author clearly states the moral of the camps if Im not for myself, who will be for me? With bitter irony Levi avers that the law to he that has will be given to he that has not will be taken away. (p. 104) is openly at work in the camp and to obey this law is the only possible way to survive. Thus, the morality of the Lager is the antithesis of morality of traffic pattern life the way the concentration camp itself is antithesis of normal world. This passage is even more sarcastic when the fact that Primo Levi himself was not particularly inviolate and capable prisoner but rather a muselman.However, as it has been mentioned in the beginning of this essay, Primo Levis book is different from other novels on the same topic. All the writers have shown the brutal morality, or rather vileness of the Lager and deduced from it that the Hftling is a man without inhibitions (p.103) thus giving up on the humankind. Levis attitude is different. He believes that humanity of the prisoners is still transcendental deep in their souls waiting for an opportunity to recover. (in the face of unprompted necessity and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are reduced to silence. p. 103) and as it becomes evident in the end of the book, he proves to be right.Another fact worth mentioning about this chapter is that the title The Drowned and the Saved used to be also the title of the English translation of the novel, indicating hence the importance of the chapter.As a conclusion it can be said that the novel If This is a Man by Primo Levi and especially the ninth chapter is a unique account of the horrifying actions carried out in German concentration camps as it tells the story unemotionally using scientific diction to accentuate the seriousness of result discussed. Analysis of the reasons behind setting up the Lager, methods used to break pile human soul and the effects of the actions carried out by SS officials gives an appalling brain wave to one of the most horrifying events of the 20th century.