Briar rose essay Narrative Essay

Briar Rose mainly tells us about what Gamma went through ruing the holocaust and this brings out more characters Like Harvey Goldman and Josef. Gamma’s story tells us about her experiences during the holocaust and also reveals how Jews , gypsies and homosexuals were treated. Holey told Gamma’s story in a fairy tale because the story is too scary to retell. She also Told It Inform of a fairy tale so that It won’t be as scarier, so that Beach, Shania and Sylvia can understand, so It can reach an audience faster.

As mentioned before, Gamma’s story was told in a fairy tale form, it is about what she went through during the holocaust but Holey chooses to tell it a fairy-tale form. She uses a lot of symbolism, Gamma’s story uses symbolism. Gamma mentions Crown of red hair and represents blood shed during the holocaust. She also mentions big black boots with silver eagles on her hat and this represents the Nazi soldiers. The castle was the gas chambers, she mentions a hundred years is forever and this represents death which Is discovered by Beach later in the novel. She mentions the thorns as sharp as barbs which represented barbed wire around the camp.

In the story Gamma says whoever goes In doesn’t come out and this represented the death camps, she meant the death camps. The story mentioned the prince who had knowledge of the past he had knowledge of the pass Gamma was talking about Joseph, a man who knew everything that was going on, he had lived through it. The princess was given breath to breath, mouth to mouth (the kiss of life) by the prince. The curse that she mentions in the story is actually the curse for the Jews from the Nazis, she says l curse you and your father and your mother the queen and all uncles and cousins and aunts.

And all the people in your village. ” And all the people who bear your name”, this represents all the Jewish people who were killed including Gamma’s family and friends. The mist represented the gas chambers that most of the Jews were killed and burnt In. But symbols often have a cluster of connotations. The mist may also stand for the Imperfect knowledge Gamma and her family has of the events of her past, which they only dimly understand. The briars can also represent the difficulties to be overcome consciousness about what was going on.

of the title is the symbol of love, which survives through the thorny briars, and is the motivating force of the whole tale, forcing Beach to carry out her promise o find the castle in the sleeping woods. Her research reveals that Gamma’s survival and her daughter’s existence have both been made possible by the love of Aaron and of Josef. The very existence of Beach and her sisters is owed to the selfless love the briar rose symbolizes. In Gamma’s fairy tale story, she says Not everyone will die, a few will Just sleep.

You, princess will be one” the princess is Gamma, it is revealed throughout the novel and she even says it to Beach when she was telling the story. She also mentions this in the fairy tale story “The peasant smiled, he had only few teeth, hue peasants know how to sort of thin, the peasant represents Joseph Petcock and the other man he was with, he reached into a pit of bodies to get her (probably because she was so pretty and so easy to spot) – as Harvey Goldman mentioned that she was so pretty and every guy wanted her but they all couldn’t talk to her.

Josef Petcock in dead bodies got Gamma and the guys gave her a life kiss. She woke up when it was Josef turn that’s why Josef is the prince. The effect of using symbolism is so that the story can be more effective, important, and less scary and also so that it can attract a wider audience. Holey also focuses on the theme of growing up and telling the truth. She still continues on using symbolism. We see how Beach and her sisters argue over hearing the Gamma’s story (Beach wants to hear it but the sisters don’t want to hear it), this represents the inability of people to deal with different situations.

Josef tells his own story the way it happened, he doesn’t glamour it and this represents his braveness. Holey also made him to be a partisan to show us his braveness. He is introduced by Father Stash, who devotes himself to the spiritual needs of the Echelon people. Their guilt makes them hostile to all recognition of the evil times many of them took part in, or at the very least permitted. Stash understands why Josef lives near Echelon Like me, he is drawn back by the souls of the dead” The Briar Rose tale is thus an allegory of Gamma’s life.

Although she cannot recall the details of her past, an amnesia that had made her survival possible, she needs to pass this story on to her descendants, and uses the fairy tale to do so. Like many allegorical tales, it tells of good triumphing over evil, of a contented life won only after life-threatening difficulties and dangers have been overcome. The effect of using allegory is very effective in conveying her story which she delivers in a superb fashion. The use of allegory also gives it a sense of realism and acts as a metaphor which helps us realism what happened during the holocaust and Gamma’s life through Beech’s promise and research.

Holey has added strands from other traditional tales to enrich the story, Beach is on Beach makes sense of Beech’s story and promised Gamma that she was going to find out about the castle “promise me you will find the castle”. Gamma’s whole version of the Briar Rose tale, Beach recognizes to be a metaphor for her life. The effects of this are the placement of segments of the never-completed fairy story at intervals through the narrative adds suspense and mystery to the novel.

More importantly, the fairy tale references seem to deepen the story of Gamma’s Holocaust sufferings and relate them to the whole cultural tradition of good and evil, of suffering and rescue, and of seeking and eventually finding. The narrative of Beech’s determined quest is to make sense of this story after her grandmother’s death. A third stage of Beech’s developing relationship with fellow Journalist, Stan is presented more lightly, but suggests that, , a happy ending is likely.

Her own happy ever after tale springs out of her grandmother’s life story, and make the bitter sadness of the Holocaust easier for the readers to bear. Gamma’s story itself was one of a happy ‘normal’ ending with a supportive family. The novel is ironic; the happily ever after” ending of the conventional fairy tale is, an ironic contrast to the horrific suffering of camp victims such as Gamma, and to the deaths of millions. As for Josef Petcock, he is gay, not the expected heterosexual lover Beach was ready to cast as her unknown grandfather.

In fact Gamma is saved by twin heroes – Josef, who gives her the kiss of life, and Aaron, who pulls her from the mass grave and soon after marries her. Josef presence is more than Justified in the story, as homosexuals were victims of the Holocaust. It is not altogether clear that Holey has intended such irony. The reality of such old folk tales is often brutal and harsh. The original included such ingredients as rape, and attempted murder, inspired by almost insane Jealousy. It is only the versions that are produced for children to avoid dealing with horrifying evil.

It is possible to view Gamma’s life as indeed a “happy ending” where the ghosts of a bitter past are being freed by family support and the ability to speak of the mercifully destroyed completely past only in terms of fairy tale. Briar Rose shows the significance of the Holocaust and its continued impact, Holey does this through characters. She does this through most of the characters, for example Gamma and Josef. Josef tells his story like he wasn’t a hero, even though he was the hero, Holey does this to represent those who are brave, he tells it the way it is (he doesn’t find different ways to tell it).

This represents heroism and how some people affected during the holocaust can still talk and tell people about it. Gamma tell her story in fairy tale form, Holey does this to represent those who want to tell the story but they story is too scary to retell. Gamma has forgotten her past and relives it through a fairy tale, and her past was so traumatic that in order to cope Gamma’s memory of the past was always presented in a unique way to her family. The quote “I have no memories in my head but one… A fairy tale” from Gamma tell us this. With their lives.

She is a very typical of a certain kind of a person; she is a courageous mother, the miraculous survivor. Holey shows the social importance of family through Beach, she was always there for her grandmother when she was in the nursing home. The importance of family heritage and understanding of the past is emphasizes by Beach, who says that she is going to solve the mystery of Gamma’s past in order to understand her own family I am going to find the castle and the prince and reclaim our family heritage” She shows the importance of remembrance-past, presence and future.

The quote, “Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars. ” The effect of this quote is for representing those who could tell the story/history, it means hey could to tell the story but it don’t mean that they are not affected with it anymore. It is a story that is supposed to be shared; it is the history that is supposed to be known. Beach suddenly realism the impact of the death of others when she went on to search and find out about the past Just like how the holocaust still affect some of today and in the future.

It is clearly the suffering of those left behind especially those who were affected by it. “The future is when people talk about the past, so if the prince knows all their past lives and tells all the people who are still to come, then the princes live again into the true”, the effect of this quote is to stress the importance of oral tradition directly though the character of Gamma.

Briar Rose indeed represents hidden millions whole stories whose stories were destroyed during the holocaust and it focuses on the impact of the holocaust, Just not the holocaust but also people affected by the holocaust (showing us what they went through). Hole’s overall purpose of writing this novel was to make us consider the real history of the holocaust and the people it affected for example Gamma and Josef. Briar Rose is indeed shaped by the intense focus of extraordinary human experiences