Respect for Prisoner B-3087--Chelsea

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            I must confess it has been awhile since I have read a novel pertaining all things Holocaust, and Prisoner B-3087 was definitely a great choice to start. The way Alan Gratz writes and portrays realistic images are simple in the ways high schoolers or even middle schoolers can understand the content. The complexity involved is the underlining meaning and emotions that the words stir in the reader. A lot of influential and important things can happen in a classroom due to this novel and Yanek’s story.
            The writing and voice that Gratz create in the characters are moving and very real and authentic. When you think of someone being tortured in the way Jews were in the holocaust, it would be hard to believe the character if they were energetic, complexed in their self-consciousness thought process, and strong-willed actions. With the narrator being so young and impressionable, his story is realistic which makes it even more moving. “I wanted to cheer them on, to raise my fist and cry Yes!Yes!Stick it to the Nazis!(171)”. When I read this, I felt the excitement that Yanek did inside his soul that was a feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time.
            It makes you connect with him in the way of going through this experience with him by knowing what he felt physically, but also what he was thinking. And the emotions that come alive again when something like hope is stirred when he hears the bombings. It just makes the entire novel come to life as the reader keeps going. The simplistic writing is what I respect because it makes the images and emotions speak for itself rather than the actual words. It gives the readers a chance to be more emotionally invested in Yanek’s story.

            There are many scenes that were gruesome. I can only assume if this was turned into a movie and the scenes truly portrayed what Yanek went through, it would be rated R. As the reader going wherever the narrator does, the part where “The man leaning on me was dead (118)” got to me because it was like my heart was racing with Yanek. The suffocating environment, and the internal anxiety mixed, was unsettling. The symbolism of being a Jew in the holocaust, being alive never knowing if today was the day I’m going to die, and literally being next to death is powerful. It emphasizes the entirety of what the holocaust was. Life given as an option and death around as a constant reminder of what awaited you if you did not tell yourself to survive. 

Comments

  1. Taylor SimmonsNovember 14, 2017 at 5:59 PM

    " It makes you connect with him in the way of going through this experience with him by knowing what he felt physically, but also what he was thinking." I really like this statement because I definitely know what you mean. Even though this was hard for me to read, I felt as though I could connect with Yanek and I could in a certain way feel what he felt.

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