Anne Sexton's poem, “After Auschwitz”, struck me as initially difficult to interpret. There is no obvious rhyme scheme or sentences that clearly express what the poem is about. However, Sexton incorporates the use of metaphorical and repetitive language. One of the first lines reads: “Every day/ every Nazi/ took, at 8:00, a child/ and sautéed him/her for breakfast/ in his frying pan.” (Lines 4-8) One of the easiest things to notice is the use of past tense verbs like "taken" and "sautéed" which indicates events in the poem that occurred after the era of the Jewish concentration and extermination camps, such as the title suggests. . As far as metaphors go, something that seemed strange in this sentence was the reference to frying a baby in a pan. I interpreted this in relation to the thousands of Jews executed every day in the gas chambers set up in the camps. In 1943, Auschwitz had eight gas chambers which, when in full operation, disposed of over 4,000 corpses per day. One website providing information on gas chambers described them as ovens. While not the same as a frying pan, as far as "sautéing" goes, the oven is a device used for cooking, though typically not when talking about people. One question I asked, however, was, “Why a baby?” Just like a child, the Jews were often unable to defend themselves from the misfortunes that befell them. An infant is a young person who depends on another to care for him in every aspect of his life. The Jews succumbed to this youthful state because their lives became dependent on the Nazis. I interpreted Sexton's use of a child as a way to describe the Jews because while they were in the camps, every area of their lives... the focus of a sheet of paper... and evidence that supports this it was on a website that said: "Much of Anne Sexton's poetry is autobiographical and focuses on her deeply personal feelings...". Since this is the case, the poem overall seems to be read as a prayer. The narrator seems to wish that because humanity, the Nazis, or the Jews are evil, they will ultimately perish through wrongdoing. However, the contrast appears again in the last line where the narrator begs the Lord not to listen to all the things she says. Despite his thoughts, he feels a sense of guilt, as if to say he doesn't want the real facts to happen. Works Cited “Anne Sexton.” Foundation for Poetry. Poetry Foundation, nd Web. 21 April 2014. . "The murderous evolution." PBS. PBS and Web. April 17. 2014. .
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