Motif of human suffering
The setting and context of This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen is in Auschwitz, Germany during World War II. Therefore in the book, the narrator tells of the various ways human beings suffered during that time. The people endured physical suffering through harsh beatings and being gassed to death, emotional suffering for those who were forced to kill or were separated from their loved ones and mental suffering for those who were told to await their death.
Allegory of the weather
In the first story in the novel, the narrator describes the weather of the day when a transport carrying thousands of Jews as, ‘… it was hot, terribly hot..’ The climatic conditions were unbearable for the narrator. This is allegorical for the narrator’s state of mind for he was forced to take the people who arrived to the gas chambers. This was mental torture for him and he could hardly bear it.
The gas trucks were a symbol of death
In Auschwitz, whenever the train stopped at the temporary railway station, gas trucks came to receive the incoming people. The trucks were filled with a gas that was used to kill the people. Therefore when the people at the camp saw the trucks, they knew that there was going to be death. The gas trucks therefore symbolized death.
The Transports as a Symbol of Food and New Items
The people who lived at the camps worked for the Reich. They were enslaved there and they were responsible for unloading people who came in the trains. They called the people ‘transport’. The prisoners eagerly waited for the transports to arrive for they would get food and other items from the people who would come and be gassed. They would therefore get excited whenever a new transport arrived.
Allegory describing people who were going to be gassed
The narrator uses the allegory, ‘ Only several men directing the traffic to keep operations running smoothly and the thousands flowing along like water from an open tap.’ The statement is allegorical because just as the water glowed from an open tap, so did the millions of people move along two single lines to the gas chambers.
