"The Lost" Post 2a

Vocabulary
broyges(99): Yiddish for angry
platitudes(102): a trite remark uttered as if it were fresh or profound

Appeals
"At one point, during the Chicago conference of cousins, I took out the photocopied translations I'd made of Shmiel's letters to their various parents and handed them out. No, no, no, my mother said, vaguely pushing her copy across the table. I don't want to read them, it's too sad" (103). This is definitely an example of an emotional appeal, showing the depth of emotion that the tragedy of Shmiel's disapperance has had on Mendelsohn's family. His mother never even met anyone of her relatives who perished in the Holocaust, and yet 40 years later the pain of that loss is still too much for her to look at the letters that Shmiel wrote begging for help while trapped in Bolechow.
"What happened at Auschwitz did not, i fact, happen to millions of Jews from places like Bolechow, Jews who were lined up and shot at the edges of open pits" (112). Although this is a sentence that is simply giving information and should have an entirely logical appeal, because of the subject matter (the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust) it is inherently an emotional sentence. Auschwitz is definitely a "loaded word" because of its world recognition as a concentration camp.
"It was because of this strangely precise mirroring, in fact, that in the middle of the twentieth century it evolved, with the precise, terrible logic of a Greek tragedy, that whatever was good for one of these two groups, who had lived side by side for centuries in these tiny towns, was bad for the other" (120). This seems to have a logical appeal because it is the author's explanation, or inference of a fact. However, as it is describing a relationship between the Jews and the Ukrainians I think this idea will become a strong emotional appeal central to the book.

Quote
"And I think of the other kinds of siblings too, those who grew up in close quarters and know one another too well, some forced to work the land, the others, seemingly luckir, more blessed, able to wander here and there with their (seemingly) ever-increasing wealth. I think, naturally, of the Ukrainians and the Jews" (109). This quote seems to have been led up to and I think it is an integral part of the book. Previously, the author has included italicized parts of the text in which sections of the Bible have been analyzed. Before they seemed random, but I think the author is bringing in to context the history of the Jewish people as a way to view not only this tragedy but others going on today as well. The conflicts that arise specifically between ourselves and the ones we know best seems important to him because of the way he can relate to his relationships with his brothers, and perhaps that is what he will in a way be searching for: how he can relate Shmiel's story to his own life.

Theme
It is the ones who are closest to us who can hurt us the most, specifically our siblings.