"Journey Into The Whirlwind"
From “Journey Into The Whirlwind” by Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg
I chose to write about 3 quotes from the excerpt which describes Eugenia’s time in prison.
“There is no place where people become acquainted more quickly than in prison, especially during such “processing“ under the influence of a common fear of the immediate future and a shared sense of outraged human dignity.” (Ginzburg, 302)
“Over and through the screams of the tortured, we could hear the shouts and curses of the torturers. Added to the cacophony what’s the noise of chairs being hurled about, fist banging on the tables, and some other and identifiable sound which throws one’s blood. Although these were only sounds, they conjured up such a vivid picture that I felt like I could see it in every detail.” (Ginzburg, 311)
“It is curious how a prisoner's traumatic state can affect his reflexes. This is my first call after three weeks in Butyrki, and one would have supposed that my first thought would be of my child, the sentence that awaited me, whether I was to live or die. But now, I was only worried about whether my cellmate would think I had been called out to inform on them.“ (Ginzburg, 315)
The first quote describes how Eugenia and her cellmates became close. Although they were all different people, with different ages and from different places, they all had one thing in common which was the fear of what could happen to them in jail. They bonded because they were the only people that they had. The third quote further explains how much the prisoners cared about each other. Eugenia was more worried about if her cellmates thought she was going to tell on them then she was about being punished or dying.
The second quote described what Eugenia and the other prisoners heard when they were in jail. They heard the sounds of people being tortured and even though they were not being tortured themselves, they felt as if they were there because the sounds were so horrible. They were forced to live in fear that they would be the next person to scream in torture.
Word Count: 360
I think the quotes you chose really give a good explanation into what was going on in the minds of people in the prisons and the nightly horrors they faced not just by being tortured but also having to listen to others receive it. I really liked the third quote you chose because it talks about how she was more worried about what the others thought about her and what she was doing instead of the decision on her life. This reminded me of Le Ly Hayslip's problem because when she arrived back from the torture camp everyone in her community thought she had told the soldiers about them and that she was a traitor and I got the sense that Eugenia had the similar feeling in her body that people thought that she was a traitor when in reality just like Le Ly Hayslip, Eugenia was the furthest thing from a traitor.
ReplyDeleteHi Liv! I really like the quotes that you chose. I think that they give a really good insight into what these people were going through. It creates a very strong imagery that I think is important to have while reading this excerpt. While I was reading this, it really reminded me of Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng. What these women went through was horrendous and that fact that they were able to keep sane is amazing. Eugenia kept her head up even when she was going through the worst of it and she didn't let anything that happened in there change her morals, which I think shows just how strong she is.
ReplyDeleteI like the quotes you chose, I think that they resemble what prisoners when through well. While reading this, I could feel the pain that her and the other prisoners were going through but they way that she tried to console the others touched me. She was going through so much and yet she still felt as though someone else needed her empathy more than she did herself.
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