“The Sunflower” the overall theme of the story was finding forgiveness. Throughout the book forgiveness was the key question of accepting the wrong for the sins a Nazi soldier has committed against the Jewish among, the other soldiers. The story develops with the main character named Simon Wiesenthal, who was a Jew. A Nazi soldier named Karl, who is badly wounded and near death. With death, soon to come for him to die in peace he seeks for forgiveness from a Jew due to all crime that he has done was to the Jews.
In the book, it will have an intended purpose and psychological. The primary purpose of this book is to leave with something to think about and what you would have done if you were in his shoes. “Forgetting is something that time alone takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision” (Wiesenthal 98). Throughout the story, it begins with the characters Simon, Josek and Arthur. Who are in a concentration camp for Jews. At the concentration camp, they become close friends.
Their normal routines such as, marching and doing labor at the camp. One day Simon caught glimpse of a Sunflower and made him think of how when he dies there will never be a Sunflower at his grave. His grave would be either in hole among other bodies or burned into ashes. As Simon was walking a nurse approached him with a question “Are you a Jew? ” With this question of yes, the nurse leads him into a hospital where a dying Nazi soldier waits for him. With this dying Nazi soldier asks a question that he will soon ask will leave you questioning everything.
As Simon stands in the room with the soldier who introduces himself as Karl, whose voice is barley auditable to hear. Begins to tell Simon his story of all his horrible doings when he became a Nazi solider. As Simon listens to the story he feels conflicted to walk away from the dying man or continue to listen to what he said. Simon choosing to stay and to listen to Karl relives the most gruesome past of his story where he was part of killing hundreds of Jews. One of the biggest crimes of them all was, forcing Jewish people to go into a building where they would be set on fire.
If Jews tried to escape from the house they were to be shot at. After Simon gets done hearing this he ran because, the thought of forgiveness is no easy task to say yes or no to at this point him leaving the Nazi solider with no answer to his question. While Simon returns to base, he tells his friends everything that has happened with Nazi solider and sunflowers that keeps appearing around the camp. When talking conversion over with his friends he makes a mission to say something solider bud sadly when he returns he passed away.
Something that keeps being brought into the story is a sunflower is, Karl keeps bringing them up and relates to certain things. He presents the sunflower as why do bad people deserve them. The biggest point of them all would be Nazi soldiers do horrible and unthinkable things and here with all the horrible things they have done a sunflower will be presented at their grave. For Jewish people, they could have been a person they have done no wrong in their life and when they die no sunflower will be at their grave instead ashes or hole stacked with other Jewish people.
There’s an uncertainty with the plot of the book. This is ‘Where is God? ” The whispers you hear around concentration camp, is god ever going to come back? In my opinion, I think everybody is thinking everything was going fine and then the whole world changed and people were getting treated unfairly this made people question where is our god at and why is this happening to us. The overall plot to the story is impressive due to the Sunflower book giving you so much to think about and what the people were thinking about during this horrible time.
This book puts in scenario of what your thoughts would have been which I think is, interesting. The main characters in the story were Simon, Karl, Arthur, Adam and Josek. Simon is the main character who is the most well developed character due him being one narrating the entire book. His personality is quiet, he studied acculture, became a Nazi hunter, very conflicted person. Artur was an ironic person, cynic, was lawyer. His character would be flat. Josek very sensitive, deeply religious person. Josek if flat a character. The characters are real due to way Simon describes them as he narrates them in the book.
The setting takes place in a concentration came in (??? ). The setting is realistic because the way they described everything with smell, scenery around the camp you can make a great visual in your head on what the camp looked like. It’s very gloomy and only thing that stands out would be the sunflowers. The smell there is awful due to gas chambers and the amount of people dying every day the aroma gets to be awful to handle when you’re not around the smell every day. The scenic effects in story were Sunflowers which with death.
The time this book was written was during the holocaust. I think they described the time well during the time era and what it was like to live at the concentration camp. The level of this book was to popular scholarly and pleasure reading. I think the author wanted to give us something to think about if we were there in the concentration camp. The point of view the story was told by Simon Wiesenthal. I think Simon was trying to give a message of forgiveness and is it possible to do that for cases such his and to leave us questioning on what we would have done.
The audience for the book could be anybody who is willing to sit down read it. The style of the book would be conversational. The content of the book was not fully developed because towards the end of the book he never gave us an answer on what his choice was which was “Did he forgive the dying soldier? ” The table of contents in book is well organized due to, it having part one and then in part two the contents listed the names of people with their response about the book were. This book gave me a new prospective over the holocaust and what it was about.
I feel that I gained more knowledge after 3 OF 4 reading this book of The Sunflower. ” I have no personal experiences that I can relate to this book except common knowledge that I picked up throughout life. This book did a great job of achieving a goal of getting more experience on what it was like to be in the holocaust and the big question that Simon had to face what a dying solider asked him. I would not recommend this book to other readers to read because In my opinion its headache on what you answer would have been in that situation during time.
