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What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Re-Forming

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What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Re-Forming What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Re-Forming Holocaust Memory Through The Fictional Narratives of Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, and Nathan Englander by Samantha Miller A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Approved April 2020 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Brian Goodman, Chair Christine Holbo Joe Lockard ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2020 ABSTRACT This thesis analyzes the unsettling presence of the Holocaust in Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl (1980), Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2013). Characters in these texts struggle to maintain a stable sense of what it means to be Jewish in America outside of a relationship to the Holocaust. This leaves the characters only able to form negative associations about what it means to live with the memory of the Holocaust or to over- identify so heavily with the memory that they can’t lead a normal life. These authors construct a re-formed memory of the Holocaust in ways that prompt a new focus on how permanently intertwined the Holocaust and Jewish identity are. In this context, re-formed means the way Jewish American writers have reconstructed the connection between Jewish identity and its relation to the Holocaust in ways that highlight issues of over- identification and negative identity associations. By pushing past the trope of unspeakability that often surrounds the Holocaust, these authors construct a re-formed memory that allows for the formation of Jewish American identity as permanently bound with constant Holocaust preoccupation, the memory of Anne Frank, and the Holocaust itself. The authors’ treatment of issues surrounding Jewish identity contribute to the genre of post-Holocaust literature, which focuses on re-forming the discussion about present day Jewish American connection to the Holocaust. Giving voice to the Holocaust in new ways provides an opportunity for current and future generations of Jewish Americans to again consider the continued importance of the Holocaust as a historical event within the Jewish community. i In a world that is once again becoming increasingly anti-semitic as a result of the current political climate, white supremacist riots, desecration of Jewish grave sites, and shootings at temples, the discussion that these texts open up is increasingly important and should remain at the forefront of American consciousness. The research in this thesis reveals that through the process of Holocaust memory constantly being re-formed through the work of these Jewish American authors, its continued influence on Jewish American culture is not forgotten. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 2 "WHO OWNS ANNE FRANK?" ....................................................................... 11 3 THE SHAWL ......................................................................................................... 20 4 THE GHOST WRITER ......................................................................................... 32 5 WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK .............. 48 6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 57 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 60 iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Looking semi-chronologically at Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl (1980), Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2013) demonstrates over time, in albeit disturbing ways, a multi- generational responsibility of the Jewish literary community to rebuild and re-form Holocaust memory after World War II. These authors construct a re-formed memory of the Holocaust in ways that prompt a new focus on how permanently intertwined Jewish identity and the Holocaust are. By pushing past the trope of unspeakability that often surrounds the Holocaust, these authors make paths for new discussions about how Jewish American identity is bound up with constant preoccupation about the Holocaust, the memory of Anne Frank, and the Holocaust as a static historical event. With this persistent influence looming over characters in these texts, issues of over-identification arise. Characters in these texts are only able to relate to their Jewish identity through the memory of the Holocaust and its continued trauma which exists as their only cultural link. After World War II, Adolf Hitler, and the concentration camps, the first immediate association between Jews and the rest of the world became the Holocaust and the negative stereotypes it left in place. The effects of the Holocaust left an entire population permanently preoccupied with how their Jewish identity is viewed negatively in the eyes of non-Jews. The authors I have chosen to discuss in this thesis, through their fictional characters and discussions of the Holocaust’s continued influence over Jews in America, have created a deformed character map of Jewish identities as a direct result of the Holocaust. 1 The main texts in this thesis each focus on over-identification and the formation of Jewish identity as negatively associated with the memory of the Holocaust. Ozick’s writing exists on one end of the spectrum where Jewish identity functions as a barrier for her characters when they try to assimilate into America. They feel no one can understand them. Roth and Englander’s works exist on another end of that spectrum where their characters rely on Jewish American’s preoccupation with memories of the Holocaust and Anne Frank. Roth and Englander’s characters try so desperately to connect to their Jewish identity, but the only point of connection they can make is through the Holocaust and Anne Frank. These characters think it is the only way to connect to Jewish identity. By pushing past the trope of unspeakability that often surrounds the Holocaust, Ozick, Roth, and Englander construct a space to re-form memories of the Holocaust’s impact on the formation of Jewish American identity. Their work highlights how constant Holocaust preoccupation, the memory of Anne Frank, and the Holocaust as a historical event are permanently bound with Jewish American identity. Ozick and Roth come from the same generation of writers, with Englander following later. This emphasizes a difference in how Holocaust memory is represented and discussed over time across various generations of Jewish American writers. Ozick and Roth’s depictions of their characters’ Jewish lives and memories are much more crude and visceral, while Englander’s characters lead a more muted, average life. The generational time gap between these texts also highlights the continued responsibility literature holds in representing Holocaust memory and the ways in which that discussion has evolved between the 1980s and the mid 2000s. 2 Ozick, Roth, and Englander are not aiming to accurately portray what happened between 1933-1945, but to discuss what happened after and the lasting effects. Through these three texts, the authors aim to re-form memories about the Holocaust that conjure up the past while also finding ways to move forward and discuss the unspeakability of a horrible event that influenced, and will continue to influence, Jewish memory, identity, and existence for decades. Unfortunately, the Holocaust has become a defining historical event for the Jewish community and resulted in the formation of over-identification and negative identity associations where Jews and the Holocaust are permanently intertwined. Characters in these three texts suffer from their connection to these negative identity associations so much so that they are unable to live unburdened by memories of the Holocaust. Very few of them are directly affected by it, although all are indirectly affected. The Holocaust has become inseparable from what it means to be Jewish, and especially what it means to be Jewish in America, where the Jewish communities in these texts rely heavily on Holocaust memory as an identity marker. For Ozick, Roth, and Englander, they each re-form Holocaust memory in different ways through their fictional characters and scenarios, and they all attempt to bridge the gap between experiential trauma and generational trauma. Quoting Dori Laub, Luminita Dragulescu writes “‘The fear that fate will strike again is crucial to the memory of trauma, and to the inability to talk about it’” (67). The varying degrees of trauma related to the Holocaust and its legacy continue to stay rooted in the Jewish community for the fear that if it is forgotten, it will happen again. The texts discussed in this thesis do an effective job of pushing past that inability and navigating ways to remember the past while also trying to create a future, even though the foreshadowed future is not always 3 successful in these fictional worlds. The relationships between the characters convey intergenerational trauma in a way that is both unsettling and necessary to think about. If we are, in the present time, meant to understand how the Holocaust continues to shape Jewish identity, perception of anti-semitic events, Jewish American literature, and day-to- day life, it is increasingly important to address these concerns while the Holocaust is still at the forefront of Jewish American consciousness. The Holocaust stays static as a memory, holding
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