Use of Symbolism in Cynthia Ozick’s the Shawl:

In The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick uses descriptive details to engage the reader. The written report describes the horror of Nazism. The setting of the story is a minginess camp. The collar main characters argon Rosa, who was a mother of two daughters, Stella who was xiv and Magda who was fifteen months. The secret plan of the story surrounds a magic shawl. The shawl is a major bug out of the complication, climax and resolution of the story. The magic shawl is the scarcely thing the three starving women engender keeping them alive and eventually leads to their demise.The plot of The Shawl ends with a camp guard tossing the sister Magda onto an electrified manage. Ozicks use of symbolism is very meaning(a) to the story. The actor uses symbolism abundantly to aid the reader envision the setting. In the commence of the story, Ozick refers to the baby Magda as, someone who is already a floating saint (Jacobs 299). Ozick refers to Magda as an angel throughout the story, smooth feat hers of hair roughly as yellow as the principal sum sewn into Rosas coat (Jacobs 300).Other symbolism within the story, talks of the shawl as the take out of linen (Jacobs 300). Beyond the concentration camp, after-school(prenominal) of the steel fence, there were green meadows stipple with dandelions and deep-colored violets beyond them even father, innocent tiger lilies, tall, lifting their orange bonnets (Jacobs 301). Past the steel fence was beauty or maybe heaven. , alone not the poor conditions of the death camp. Of the three characters in The Shawl, Stella is a instantly character.She is entirely part of the story to allow the author to get to the climax. The climax comes when Stella becomes shivery, and takes the shawl for warmth. Again, the author uses symbolism, Stella is cold or cruel. Magda is the most dynamic character. She is presented to us first as a quite a baby, who is hungry and does not cry. Magda simply sucks on the shawl. When her shawl is taken, she cries and walks wobbly into the yard. In the yard of the concentration camp, she is picked up and thrown by a guard to her death.Rosa is a flat character, she does not change throughout the story. As the mother of the two girls, she tries to keep her family from their impend death. When Magda is killed, she does not run into the yard, knowing she ordain be shot. **** There are paradoxical statements in this article. Stella is NOT Rosas daughter, she is her niece. Megan Use of symbolism in Cynthia Ozicks The Shawl. 123HelpMe. com. 03 Apr 2010 .