Formal Reading Response 2 The Last of the Just by Andre Schwarz-Bart follows the “Just Men” of the Levy family for eight generations. The story of the Just Men, or Lamed-Vovnik, is adapted from a Jewish legend which says that there are thirty-six righteous men in each generation. In Swchwarz-Bart’s novel, these men save humanity by absorbing all of the world’s suffering and pain. There is one Just Man born into each generation of the Levy family, and Schwarz-Bart uses this concept to express the suffering of European Jews throughout history until the last Just Man is killed in the Holocaust. While it is an amazing narrative about the suffering of the Jewish people of Europe, The Last of the Just falls short in a few areas. One of these is…show more content… She too is presented as an untamed animal prior to her marriage. When describing the relationship between Golda and her parents, Schwarz-Bart writes:
And Golda would laugh gustily while her mother, a woman angular in shape and in character, as if honed by life, protested harshly and stubbornly, ‘May I choke on my own juices if I understand this little animal! If you were ugly as a toad you could find a man to take care of you if you wanted one! And what do you think I raised you for?’ (Schwarz-Bart, 320)
For the women in The Last of the Just, their primary purpose is to find a man to take care of them and to start a family. In addition to that, like Judith, Golda is told that she is stupid. Golda’s mother calls her a “featherhead,” and tells her “you’ll never find a husband if you go on that way.” (Schwarz-Bart, 320) Golda is also eventually forced into a mothering role. When they are put into the railway car, Golda is tasked with taking care of the children even though they are not her own. One example of this is when “With the help of a few women who had somehow managed to stand up, Golda began rubbing the limbs of the children closest to death.” (Schwarz-Bart, 365) Furthermore, Schwarz-Bart writes “But women too, turning their backs on life, were losing their reason, dying of fear in the shadows, and the only remedy, the only way to quiet the storms swelling in their throats was to place a child in their arms.” (Schwarz-Bart, 360) This seemingly suggests that women live only to take care of
