Genre
Autobiography
Setting and Context
The action takes place in Poland during the Second World War.
Narrator and Point of View
The action is told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.
Tone and Mood
The tone and mood is a tragic one.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the narrator and the antagonists are the Nazi soldiers.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is an ideological one and is between the idea that everyone is equal and the idea that there are superior nations.
Climax
The story reaches its climax when Gerda is separated from her family.
Foreshadowing
The brutality with which the Germans will treat the Jews is foreshadowed from the first chapter when the narrator describes the way in which the German army decided to enter the city and how they began vandalizing private and public property.
Understatement
When the main character's parents claim that the German army is not so bad is an understatement because later they are forced to leave their homes, are robbed of everything they own, and the parents are also murdered by the German soldiers.
Allusions
One of the main allusions presented here is the idea that the German people did not attack the Jews because they believed them to be dangerous but because they needed their wealth.
Imagery
One of the most important images is pained by Anna, a close friend of Gerda's family. Anna described how she and her family were taken away and how the German soldiers killed her husband in front of her eyes. This image is used here to transmit the idea that the Germans saw the Jews as being less valuable than animals and that they were trained in such a way that they did not feel any form of remorse when executing innocent people.
Paradox
One of the main paradoxical ideas is the way in which the Polish people in the town where Gerda lived welcomed the German soldiers and treated them as their saviors. Shortly after these events, the German people began killing and abusing the same people who welcomed them with open arms in their city and homes.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The camps in which the narrator lives for a few years are used here as a way through which the narrator also transmits the idea of hatred caused by racial differences.
Personification
We have a personification in the line "the bombs sang their threatening melody right above us".
