The Shawl Essay Questions

Ozick says Stella is as much a victim as Rosa; is this valid?

It is easy to dislike Stella at first, for her jealousy of a baby is unbecoming and she looks on the child, Rosa believes, as a "cannibal" would. She knows how much Magda loves the shawl and must have known something terrible would happen if she took the shawl away from her. Despite all of this, Stella is indeed sympathetic. She is a child herself, spending her early teenage years in unspeakably hellish conditions. She is cold, scared, hungry, and angry; we do not know for sure, but given her age she may have been raped as well. Her immediate family is clearly gone and she is not emotionally connected to her aunt. Stella is stretched to the breaking point just like everyone else is; she wants to survive like everyone else does.

Why is Magda compared to animals?

Magda's eyes are described as tiger-like twice, and at the moment of her death she is described as a butterfly. Ozick does this not just for aesthetic reasons. Critic Miriam Sivan explains that "the contrast between the image of the butterfly, an object of delicate beauty, a reminder of all that is tender and sweet in the world, and the scrawny malnourished body of her fifteen month child begin thrown against the electric fence, forces a revision of the Nazi association with Jews and vermin." Tigers are also emblems of power, and butterflies emblems of freedom.

What is the meaning of the contrast between silence and speaking?

Silence is conspicuous in this story. There is no dialogue, firstly, and Magda is notably mute. She does not cry or scream even when she is starving or plagued by lice. It is only after her shawl is taken from her that she is filled with words, screaming a "long viscous rope of clamor." Her speech is what gets her killed, and Rosa knows that she must not also cry out after her daughter's death or she will be killed as well. Silence is thus necessary in the camps because it is a form of protection, of retaining dignity; as a German proverb expressed, "Silence is golden, speech is Dachau." After the camps, though, many Jews felt the need to speak, record, bear witness. Sivan writes that "Ozick makes the point that silence is an interim stage."