Oskar Schindler Character Analysis

Under extreme pressure and heat, even the seemingly unyielding rock capitulates and metamorphosizes into something different. In such extreme conditions, diamonds form, shimmering pinpricks of light born when black carbon transforms and adapts to the conditions. People too, adapt to adverse situations, although circumstance determines whether they are like a diamond, or just another stone. Oskar Schindler, both a character in Schindler’s List and a real man, finds himself in the midst of World War II, arguably the most trying times in human history. In 1939, right as Poland falls to the German blitzkrieg, Schindler decides to open an enamelware factory, and, throughout his trials as an entrepreneur and later successful factory owner, suffering …show more content…
Caught in the midst of a war, living on the site of Nazi concentration camps, Schindler lives his daily life in the shadow of an ongoing massacre. The reality of the situation finally starts to penetrate his mind when a Jewish woman comes to him with a strange request. This woman wants Schindler to take her parents into his factory to save them. She knows that Amon Goeth, essentially Satan incarnate, will kill them soon if she does not find them a lifeline. Schindler, initially stone cold, refuses her request, but upon looking back at it, he relents and tells Stern to bring the woman’s parents into the factory. Schindler empathizes with the woman’s suffering, causing him to change his course of action, leading to a kinder Schindler. Another event that shakes Schindler 's convictions occurs later in the movie, when a trainload of hot, parched Jews sits on the tracks in from of Schindler, Goeth and other Nazi officials. Eventually, the moans emanating from the dehydrated Jews unnerves Schindler, to the point where he gathers hoses and helps to spray down the emaciated people. The pain of the Jews touches him, and instead of recoiling, Schindler decides to find a way to help, which the Schindler from the beginning of the movie would not have done. Finally, comes the most influential event that makes Schindler transform into his compassionate form. At the start of the mass deaths, Schindler rides a …show more content…
As Schindler struggles to preserve his Jews in an increasingly desperate Third Reich, a simple paperwork error throws all of his women out of the frying pan, directly into the fires of Auschwitz. Only a timely intervention by Schindler saves them as he, according to Roger Ebert, “walks into the death camp himself, and brazenly talks the authorities out of their victims.” The egocentric Schindler who saved Stern would never have put his life on the line as the changed Schindler does. Then, once Schindler has the women safe in his factory, he proceeds to sabotage all of the machines, as he does not want to help the both futile, and reprehensible Nazi cause. The days of earning money at the expense of others have long passed, and now Schindler spends at the expense of himself, for the lives of over a thousand others. Schindler’s defining moment, however, occurs five minutes after the clock strikes midnight. On this midnight that marks the end of the war, Schindler, the new Schindler, breaks down in tears in front of all of his people, weeping for the extra people he could have, should have saved. He can hardly fathom the thought that he kept his gold Nazi pin, and his car, when together they would save three people. The apathetic Schindler