The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness Literary Elements

Memoir; Religion and Philosophy; History.

The setting is during World War Two, in two Nazi death camps.

The narrator is also the author, and he writes from the perspective of a prisoner in these camps, and also as someone asked by a Nazi to forgive the murders they have committed.

The tone is reflective and thoughtful.

Simon is the protagonist, Karl, a Nazi, is the antagonist.

The major conflict in the book is World War Two during which Hitler's "final solution" led to the Holocaust. However, there is also conflict within Simon himself, as he does not know if he did the right thing by not offering forgiveness to a Nazi for murders he committed.

The climax of the story comes in 1945 when Simon's camp is liberated and he is physically freed.

Simon does not offer Karl forgiveness which foreshadows his inner turmoil about whether he has done the correct thing.

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The author alludes to many incidents during the war in which Jews were murdered on a mass scale, for example, in the ghetto where a kindergarten was set up to fool parents into sending their children there; when they did, the children were taken away to the gas chamber immediately

The imagery Simon paints is horrific as it enables the reader to picture exactly what Karl did. This means that we are not only able to picture the visual events but also to imagine what the smells and sounds of terror must have been like as well.

Karl believes himself to be repentant but even on his death bed displays his anti-Semitism.

There is a parallel between Simon's experiences with anti-Semitism at the technical college as a student, and the anti-Semitism he experiences during the war in his encounter there with Karl.

The camp is the way in which the prisoners are all described as one, rather than as individuals.

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