The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

I believe Rosa needed to write how she was feeling.  She needed to remove herself from her guilt and pain regarding her past.  Any good therapist will encourage a person to write what it is that is bothering them.  This serves many purposes.  Sometimes you can hand what you’ve written to the person you’ve written about or you can destroy it and never look back.  Unfortunately, Rosa is still working on understanding why all this happened to her.  Why was she the one who survived and not Magda?  By writing about these atrocities, she is able to come to some understanding of herself and why all this happened.

Her description of the pen and its ability to speak the truth by untying the tongue, to speak as it was meant to speak -- her true thoughts and feelings.  She was explaining when all her possessions were taken away from her, especially about her future that was never to come.  She needed to write about her experiences even if it was to Stella who seemed to have forgotten all that happened to them.  Rosa was not able to understand how Stella was able to move on.  

As I mentioned in class, I think Rosa had a reality break.  She confused and compared everything going on around her in the present day with the camp that she came from.  She became so engulfed with her past that she was not able to move forward with her present or future.  I believe Stella and the memory of Magda and writing to both would have allowed Rosa to begin to have some closure on certain issues while working on others.  Writing would provide this for Rosa as a road map to understanding herself.   

I am a firm believer that writing what you are feeling down on paper is a good way to begin to heal.  This is exactly what Rose is doing.  I also believe in the saying, “If you’re too busy looking in the rearview mirror, you can’t see what’s in front of you.”  Writing things down, for Rosa, will help her reconcile her feelings and maybe be able to move on with her life.  She has been through some horrific events.  I give her credit for being a survivor.  She’s stronger than she thinks.