Rosa

" Before is a dream, after is a joke, only during stays."

To me this quote is the definition of Rosa. She has let what happened to her in the camp define her, so much that she cant go back to life before the camp & she cant make a new life for helfself after. She has isolated herself. She is not taking care of herself , she doesnt leave her room and stella is for the most part her contact to the outside world. She intentially starves herself. She lives in poverty and this is all her doing. All of the things that she does and the way that she lives is a replecation of camp life. She is inflicting punishment on herself. I honestly cannot understand why Rosa chooses to do this to herself, but the camp has changed and broken her.

I think that if Madga had survived that Rosa wouldnt be acting this way . I think that she would have moved on with her life, but she blames her self SOOO much for Madgas death, that it has altered her life forever. She thinks that it is wrong for her to try and move on because Madga never had the chance to move on. Honestly i think that Rosa has lost it . I am very suprised that she hasnt tried to kill herself, but then again im sure that even if she had thought of it she wouldnt do it because of the fact that she would feel that was the easy way out , and Rosa feels like she needs to be punished for letting madga die. This is why 30 years later she still cant get over what happened to her.

I dont think that its so much the camp that Rosa cant get over. Its madgas death. I also think that maybe she replecates the camp life in her own life because that was the last time that she had madga, and she also does it as a form of punishment to herself. She still clings to the shawl and is awaiting Stella to send it to her b/c it has something to do with Madga. Its really not the experience of the camp that Rosa cannot get over, It was magdas death.

But then again,: how does a mother get over seeing her child murdered before her eyes ?

The shawl . Blog #1 w/e 4/30

Story #2 in the shawl was  more interesting in my opinion than story number one . The second story to me shows how a traumatic experience really can change your life forever . In this story we meet Rosa ...30 years later . She is hardly the Rosa we met in The first story . Rosa is 59 now & living In Florida .  Rosa lives in Florida which she calls a " hellish place " she associates the place and the sun with an executioner and a furnace.  Eventhough she thinks this of Florida she still chooses to live there because she is punishing herself for what happened to madga. While Stella has moved on , Rosa cannot get over what happened in the camp . In her letters she creates this life for madga . She is delusional. She blames herself for not saving madga . When Rosa was released from the camp , she owned a successful antique shop but she lost it one day & destroyed it because she didn't like the kind of ppl that shopped there & how they wanted the antiques for the wrong reason ."... whatever you explained to them , they didn't understand " .