Milkweed Themes Essay

 Author's Note: This is an essay discussing the themes in "Milkweed". More specifically loss of innocence. I compared it to "Life of Pi".

People are dying in the streets. Dead bodies litter the ground, and poor souls  barely clinging to life stumble over the rubble. People are willing to eat anything that is digestible, anything to stay alive. But young Misha, unsure of his age, name, or past, seems oblivious to all this. Even though the Nazis are slowly torturing his friends, he loves them for their big black boots. That is, until the moment he finally figures out what is going on.

Misha is completely innocent,  he just doesn't seem to notice hat is happening in the ghetto. People are dying around him, and he doesn't even care. He was never able to live a normal life. And he realizes this when he is an adult and immigrates to America. He just babbles on street corners about his past, because he finally realizes what he really witnessed. The childhood moments with death and torture are stamped into his mind, and he will never be able to forget them. The effects of witnessing such horrible events have made it so it is impossible to live a normal life.

The same thing sort of happens in Life of Pi. When Pi is starving in the lifeboat, he does some things nobody would do in a normal situation. He resorts to cannibalism, and eats a part of the dead cook. He is a strict vegetarian, and he eats fish and other animals. All these events, especially the cannibalism, will cause his to not live a normal life. He will always have this on his conscience, the fact that he ate another human being. In a way, he lost his innocence when he resorted to cannibalism.

Just like Pi, Misha lost his innocence. He witnessed things that no person should ever witness, and as a result paid for it later on. He no longer was able to live a normal life with his memories imprinted in his mind. He was completely unaware of the fact that the Jews were being left alone to die inside the ghetto, until the moment he finally understands. From that moment on, he is tortured by his memories.

Assignment #3

Author's Note: This is an assignment about a character in our book. We had to analyze a character and their motives and if they were dynamic or static. 

The main character in Milkweed is Misha, an orphan boy who's age is not known, and is not smart. Misha just wants to survive, and help his friends survive in the ghetto. When he sees his friend dangling by his neck from a street light, he barely notices. He does this by stealing food from the outside and bringing it back in. The character is dynamic, because he changes the lives of others. The Milgroms probably wouldn't have survived without Misha. Misha is pretty much their only source of food, like when he gives them eggs. He is kind of like Pi, because his only motive is to survive. He doesn't really understand enough to have any other motive.

Assignment #2

Author's Note: This is the assignment about how the point of view of our book is important. I thought the point of view was really important because the main character had no clue what was happening. 

The point of view in Milkweed is extremely important. It is told from the point of the orphan kid, who's age is not know, but has no clue what is going on. When the Nazis come, he likes them because if their big, shiny, black boots. Some times he describes events vividly and they turn out to be the least important. Then he'll sum a large event in a page or two, like when he was on the farm, he talked about it for a couple pages. It turns out he was on the farm for three years. Disturbing images are described by him so blandly, like how dead bodies of Jews littered the streets, he seems completely unaffected by it. There is one event that comes to mind that I didn't understand at all. Misha finds his friend and the leader of the band of boys, Uri, in a hotel for the Nazi soldiers working as a busboy. At the end, he shoots off Misha's ear. I think this was so they thought he was dead and wouldn't put him on the train to the concentration camp, but the reader is never sure. Both these events are examples of what I am trying to say. He just doesn't notice what is going on around him, and can't describe the things he does understand. This changes how the story is viewed.

The story would completely different if it was told from a different perspective or third person. If it were told through the eyes of an adult, the reader would have a different take on the story. It would be so much about a kid not knowing that he is in a desperate fight for survival, and into just another historical fiction novel about the holocaust. If it were told from third person but still followed Misha, it would also be different. The reader would get more details and have a solid view of what is happening. With Misha's poor descriptions, the reader never has a concrete idea of what is happening.

Milkweed Perspective

Author's note: In Milkweed the perspective is from the point of view of a kid who doesn't understand what is happening. I changed it to his "uncle" Uncle Shepsel, who is trying to convert from a Jew to a Lutheran so he can get out of the ghetto where they keep all the Jews. 

I realized that was no way out of the ghetto, at least if I remained a Jew. So I decided to become a Lutheran. It started when I got a book about Lutheranism. I read the book front to back a thousand times, memorizing all the words. I taught myself how to be Lutheran, and I was no longer a Jew. I was free, free at last. It made me happy just thinking about the prospect of going home and living a normal life again. But it didn't last all that long. When they started the deportation, I was confident I would not have to go, because after all, I was not a Jew. But they didn’t listen to me. They took me anyways, despite my pleads that I was no longer a Filthy Son of Abram. Why didn’t they listen?