Magda

Magda strangely looks like an Aryan, with her blue eyes and blonde hair. Magda is inferred to be the result of one of the Nazi guards raping Rosa because she had “another kind of face altogether, eyes blue as air, smooth feathers of hair nearly as yellow as the Star sewn into Rosa's coat. You could think she was one of their babies” (The Shawl). Rosa loves Magda nonetheless, but her Aryan genetics is also the primary reason for Stella’s hatred. Rosa is a Jewish woman imprisoned in the camp with her daughter, Magda, and her niece, Stella. Her breasts are completely dried up due to malnourishment, and she can no longer feed Magda, who has the swollen belly of the starving. Rosa consciously knows that Magda has no chance of survival, and she especially …show more content…
Rosa contemplates risking her own life and possibly Magda’s in order to hand Magda to a bystander. This risky action could possibly save Magda’s life long-term, but her fate is uncertain. Rosa, again jeopardizing her own life, gives almost all of her food to Magda, even though she knows in the back of her head that Magda will not survive; Stella gives no food to Magda. Trying to persist with the lack of available food, Magda depends on the shawl for survival. Stella simply takes the shawl away because she is cold, perhaps because it is the only thing Stella has control over. Toward the end of the story, Magda runs off in search of her survival tool, the shawl. Rosa once again must decide between Magda’s life and her own. She must choose whether to run after her, in which they would both be killed, or save herself and let Magda go on her own. Rosa resolves to retrieve the shawl in order to lure Magda back, but Magda is already out of sight by the time she returns. Rosa watches a German soldier carry Magda away on his shoulders. Survival is exhibited one last time in the final moments of Magda’s life. As Magda hits the fence, dies, and falls to the ground, Rosa has yet another impossible choice to make. If she runs to Magda, or if she screams at the sight of her baby’s death, she will be shot. In the end Rosa chooses survival, as she did throughout the story, using the shawl to mute her …show more content…
The shawl itself is described as a “magical shawl” because it could “nourish an infant for three days and three nights” (The Shawl). The shawl is also a literary symbol of the tallit, or a Jewish Prayer Shawl (Puffer-Rothenberg); those who wear this symbol of faith may be “surrounded by the holiness and protection of the commandments” (The Shawl). The shawl is a symbol of speech for both the infant and mother, a means of silent communication, like an umbilical cord between the two characters. The shawl is to make the survival of motherhood emblematical to the survival of the Jewish race. Rosa uses the living garment to resurrect her daughter. Worn by men during prayer and women in the secular setting, the shawl is a symbol that bridges two worlds. Stella’s character is another important symbol because she functions as a reflection of the larger situation. Ozick refers to other camp inmates only twice, both times through Stella. Ozick indirectly describes Stella as an antagonist even though she is one of the victims. The use of the word “even” preceding Stella’s name in the lines “Someone, not even Stella, [will] steal Magda to eat her,” and “even Stella said it was only an imagining” (Scrafford), implies a correspondence of the other prisoners through her impulses and perceptions. Stella symbolizes ashes of the death camp and belongs to those who lost their humanity and their will