11 & 12 "The Canto of Ulysses" & "The Events of the Summer"

• Engels
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• GCSE

Concepts Literature HL

Concepts to consider in the memoir:

Identity, control, humanity, language and morality 

 

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Goals for today 

Concepts and literary concepts to consider in this memoir

The Canto of Ulysses background and intertextuality

Levi in the circles of hell

The beginning of the end - events in Europe 

What is a man and Lorenzo

Act 1

Concepts  

If This is a Man 

Concepts we generated (top 5): 

Dehumanization,(loss of) identity, humanity, language & morality 

Literary concepts Literature HL

Concepts to consider in the memoir:

Structure, tone, stylistic choices, rhetorical devices

 

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Conceptual question

How does loss of humanity through control affect our identity and morality?

The Canto of Ulysses (Odysseus) 

• Ulysses (Odysseus) was the hero of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. 
  
• He was king of Ithaca and was portrayed, in the poem, as a  man of outstanding wisdom and shrewdness, eloquence, resourcefulness, courage, and endurance.
• Odysseus's most famous ruse is that of the Trojan horse that was used to recapture Troy. 
• Odysseus’s wanderings with his army and the recovery of his house and kingdom are the central theme of the Odyssey. 

Adapted: Britannica.com

Dante Alighieri 1265 - 1321

• Italy’s most famous writer: the father of the Italian language, as he refused to write in Latin.
  
• His masterpiece is Divina Commedia, an epic narrative poem where the author is guided through Paradiso, Inferno and Purgatorio* by his beloved Beatrice and the Roman writer Virgil.
  


• * Paradiso = paradise, Inferno = hell, Purgatoria = purgatory 
• During his long journey, Dante meets all kinds of people who have been punished or rewarded depending on how they behaved in life. In the 8th ring of hell he meet Ulysses.

Dante Alighieri 1265 - 1321

Inferno is the most famous due to its imaginative punishments for the souls of sinners: 

Flatterers were immersed in a ditch filled with human shit, to mimic what came out of their mouths in life 

Blasphemers (heresy) had to walk through a scorching desert while fire rained down on them, feeling the punishment of the God they had denied in life 

The lustful were whirled around in a tornado, mimicking the violence of their passions when alive 

Dante’s Ulysses is in the eighth circle of Hell (for flatterers) because of his cunning and sharp mind which caused the deaths of so many Trojans.

Intertextuality 

In what ways can you see parallels between Primo Levi and Ulysses in The Odyssey and in the eighth circle of hell? 

Write down your findings. 

• Both are sent to a kind of Hell against their will
  
• Both endure terrible abuse and cruelty but survive
  
• Both are tormented by powerful forces beyond their control (gods/guards)
  
• Both lose their comrades, often violently
  
• Both have almost unbelievable stories that they retell to the world
  
• Both have to sacrifice their pride and dignity to survive
  
• Both go on a long journey, literally and metaphorically
  
• Both are far from home
  
• Both have to fight to survive
  

Response 

make notes in your class notebook on how you think Levi has encountered each of the Nine Circles of Hell in his time at Auschwitz?

Research the Circles  to help with this task.

Give examples from the text.

Remember, there may be more than one way to interpret the sin:

e.g. ‘lust’ doesn’t necessarily imply just sexual desire, what other kinds of lust are there?

What does this mean? Why is it so important for Levi? 

'Think of your breed; for brutish ignorance 

Your mettle was not made; you were made men ,

To follow after knowledge and excellence.' 

"The Events of the Summer" - the beginning of the end. 

• In 1944, the tide of war turned against the Germans
  
• The Russians were slowly advancing from the Eastern Front; they had a 5:1 superiority in soldiers over the Germans.
  
• In reaction to this, German camp commandants evacuated the camps, sending prisoners on death marches west.
  
• The Death marches were designed to exhaust prisoners to death, and destroy  evidence for the camps
  
• The Red Army finally pushed west into Poland and almost made it to Berlin, liberating the camps by spring of 1945.
  
• Normandy landings - D-Day - June 1944
  
• On 20th July 1944, members of Nazi high command made an assassination attempt on Hitler's life – it failed.
  

Lorenzo 

.dd

Lorenzo is an Italian civilian worker. He gives us a glimpse of humanity and hope amidst the cruelty:

“there still existed a just world outside our own…a remote possibility of good”

“he neither asked nor accepted any reward, because he was good and simple and did not think that one did good for a reward”

"Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man." 

Lorenzo 

.dd

" The story of my relationship with Lorenzo is both long and short, plain and enigmatic: it is the story of a time and condition now effaced from every present reality, and so I do not think it can be understood except in the manner in which we nowadays understand events of legends or the remotest history." 

Goals for today 

Consider what is a man and Lorenzo

What is a man? Levi considers this question in this passage. What is his conclusion? 

What is a man? 

.dd

Levi circles back to this question, applying it evenly to everyone.

He considers all the people involved in the machinery of the camps and to what extent they have lost their humanity: it seems that none of them are men anymore. He seems to suggest that everyone involved feels “desolation”. Even the Nazis, who are in control, cannot see that they have lost something they value.

The camp has brutalised the prisoners and the guards. Everyone has lost their morality and therefore their humanity, except Lorenzo.