The Periodic Table Chapter Summary

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi was very interesting. You could really tell that he had a deep fascination with chemistry. He relates what happens in his life to the chemical elements. Each chapter of the book is named after a chemical element in the periodic table and he relates all of his life. He doesn’t seem to be able to separate his work life and personal life. It’s almost like the more he came to understand the periodic table and how to work with the elements he would also understand life more and grow to be more in depth. When he titled his memoir The Periodic Table, Levi shows us that there is a certain way he is writing about his experiences that are like the elements in chemistry. Just like all the chemicals he tests in his lab, Levi’s experiences have different degrees of purity, different weights, and different reactions, depending on what he uses to fuel them. The Periodic Table is written chronologically, first is his ancestry, his study of chemistry and practicing the profession in wartime Italy, stories he wrote while he was there, and his subsequent experiences as an anti-Fascist partisan. Then his arrest and imprisonment, interrogation, and internment in the Fossoli di Carpi and Auschwitz camps, and postwar life as an industrial chemist. In the very beginning of the book there is a discussion about …show more content…
My favorite chapter was “Iron,” where Levi recalls his friendship with a young man named Sandro. His friend, a man of action and adventure, loved nature and mountain climbing. Sandro constantly urged the bookish Primo to accompany him on his excursions. These adventures into the mountains, may have been dangerous but, proved to be wonderfully exciting, for they helped the young men to prove themselves and to prepare themselves “for an iron future, drawing closer month by