“Even in a city as small as Ferrara, you can manage, if you like, to disappear for years and years, one from another, living side by side like the dead.”
The sense of community is a subject handled in the narrative as a significant thing to the dwellers of the Italian city of Ferrara. The narrator witnesses the effect of Italian fascism which sees the Jewish people being restricted from interacting or rather associating with Christians. The statement, therefore, highlights how this dynamic would prove that even in a small city like Ferrara the sense of community could easily be lost. The connection that was shared by the community is forcibly being shattered due to the rising of fascism. Thus, the narrator observes the implications of this between him and the Finzi-Continis.
“One of the most odious forms of anti-Semitism was precisely this: to complain that Jews aren't sufficiently like other people, and then, the opposite, once they've become almost totally assimilated with their surroundings, to complain that they're just like everybody else…”
The quotation highlights the absurdity behind the notion of anti-Semitism in that it is just hatred that lacks any concrete reason at all. The novel focuses on the anti-Semitism that Italian fascism fostered in the society that would eventually cause The Holocaust. The narrator witnesses the impact of the atrocious acts against Jewish people of whom he lived side by side and saw them as family. He observes how an idea that could be justified by any ludicrous logic would lead to the massacring of an entire community. The statement demonstrates the damaging nature of social constructions that lack any basis other than hatred.
