Half a Revenge When writing stories or poems, many writers use some sort of literary technique or literary device. A literary device is a structure used by writers in their work to convey his or her message in a simple manner to the reader. They are used to help readers analyze a piece of writing. In “Autobiography,” Pagis used imagery and irony to tell the story of the Jews that lost their voice and those that were murdered by the Nazis. Dan Pagis, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Romania and imprisoned as a child in a concentration camp in Ukraine. He became an Israeli poet but died in July of 1986 in Jerusalem. He received his education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before he died, he wrote several books and poems
…show more content…
Pagis used imagery to show silence. For example, in stanza five, he talks about death. “You can die once, twice, even seven times, but you can’t die a thousand times. I can.” This can be interpreted as many people die or have seen death and by doing so you can be hurt, but you soon become numb to it. He feels like he will never become numb to death because only he can die a thousand times. To him, death is always a new feeling. Pagis describes death to be a type of silence which with an absence one tends to feel it or experience …show more content…
In the first line the speaker is already dead, which established a loss of voice. In the poem Pagis used “I” five times. When the author uses “I” he is talking about all of the Jews who were killed; he considered the Jews and himself as one. By doing so, he uses his writing to tell their stories. This soon becomes more apparent when he talks about being murdered by his “brother.” In the bible (Genesis 4) it talks about how Cain was the first to kill, but only until later in the poem does he mentions Cain. It is considered irony because although he was talking about Cain in the second stanza as a brother who invented murdered, Adam and Eve, who were his parents, invented grief. “Him” on the other hand is represented as being Abel, who was the brother who invented silence. He was comparing Cain to the Nazis and Abel as all the Jews that were
Pagis used imagery to show silence. For example, in stanza five, he talks about death. “You can die once, twice, even seven times, but you can’t die a thousand times. I can.” This can be interpreted as many people die or have seen death and by doing so you can be hurt, but you soon become numb to it. He feels like he will never become numb to death because only he can die a thousand times. To him, death is always a new feeling. Pagis describes death to be a type of silence which with an absence one tends to feel it or experience …show more content…
In the first line the speaker is already dead, which established a loss of voice. In the poem Pagis used “I” five times. When the author uses “I” he is talking about all of the Jews who were killed; he considered the Jews and himself as one. By doing so, he uses his writing to tell their stories. This soon becomes more apparent when he talks about being murdered by his “brother.” In the bible (Genesis 4) it talks about how Cain was the first to kill, but only until later in the poem does he mentions Cain. It is considered irony because although he was talking about Cain in the second stanza as a brother who invented murdered, Adam and Eve, who were his parents, invented grief. “Him” on the other hand is represented as being Abel, who was the brother who invented silence. He was comparing Cain to the Nazis and Abel as all the Jews that were