The Shawl (Criticism)

Criticism

Tery Griffin

Griffin has published several short stories and essays and has taught at Trinity College and at the University of Michigan. In the following essay, she discusses the significance of the shawl in Ozick’s story.

There are many ways to approach a work of fiction, to decide what that work has to offer you. You can look at the plot: the events that happen and the order in which they occur. You can examine the characters who people the story: what can you learn from who they are and what they do? You can study the story’s language, or the images — both obvious and suggested — that the writer uses.

In Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl,” the images and language the author uses bring certain ideas to mind. This discussion will lead us to one of the things “The Shawl” imparts: a suggestion about how strong the human will to survive is and the lengths to which human beings will go to ensure their survival. The first and most obvious thing to consider upon finishing “The Shawl” is the shawl itself. It is clearly important, since the story is named after it. The shawl is also one of the most widely discussed parts of the story. It seems as if each critic who considers this story has his or her own interpretation of the shawl.

In his article “Holocaust Responses I: Judaism as a Religious Value System,” Alan L. Berger claims that the shawl “is a literary symbol of the tallit,” or Jewish prayer shawl. To wrap oneself in the tallit, he says, is to be surrounded “by the holiness and protection of the commandments.” Berger believes that one message of “The Shawl” is that “Jewish religious creativity and covenantal symbolism can occur even under the most extreme conditions.” In his interpretation, the shawl protects first Magda and later Rosa from the horrors that surround them in the same way that the Jewish religion protects the souls of Jews from the horrors of the world.

In an article in Studies in American Jewish Literature, Suzanne Klingenstein says “the shawl functions in place of speech for both infant and mother and also as a kind of umbilical cord between the two characters.” Klingenstein stresses the mother/ daughter relationship in “The Shawl” and believes that this relationship is the heart of the story. The shawl is important because it represents the constant link between mother and daughter.

Andrew Gordon believes the shawl is a “transitional object,” an object that helps an infant make the transition from the state of being one with its mother to the recognition that it is an individual, separate from its mother. He states that Rosa, Stella, and Magda, “in their need to possess the shawl can be considered as infants suffering extreme oral deprivation and in need of a mother.” Gordon reads “The Shawl” as “a story about delusion as a defense against an overwhelming reality, against loss of control, and against traumatic loss.” In Gordon’s interpretation, the shawl represents that delusion: it is an “illusion” which “allows for magical thinking as a defense against anxiety in traumatic circumstances.” Rosa can believe that the shawl can nourish and hide her baby.

While each of these interpretations has merit, it is possible to view the role of the shawl in the story in a less complicated way and have those views regarded as completely valid. To do this, simply examine what happens in the story and how the shawl relates to those events.

Death is omnipresent in “The Shawl.” Death is introduced in the opening paragraph, when the narrator explains that Rosa’s breasts do not have enough milk to feed the baby Magda — who sometimes screams because there is nothing for her to suck except air — that Stella is also ravenous, and that Stella has knees that are “tumors on sticks” and elbows that are “chicken bones.” Later, twice in quick succession it is stated that Rosa thinks Stella is waiting for Magda to die. Readers are repeatedly told that Magda is going to die, and her death moves closer as the story progresses. First, Rosa knows Magda is going to die very soon, then today, then now. Finally, in one long scene that takes up nearly half the story, we watch as Magda dies. Death fills “The Shawl.”

The role of the shawl when we examine its relationship to death is to thwart death. It saves Magda from starvation. Throughout the story, as long as Magda remains hidden under the shawl, she remains alive. It is only when the shawl is taken from her that Magda dies. When Magda is murdered, Rosa stuffs the shawl into her own mouth, stifling a scream. If Rosa had screamed, the guards would have killed her, too.

Another prominent idea in “The Shawl” is the idea of hell. Hell is brought up in the first sentence, where we are told that Stella feels “cold, cold, the coldness of hell.” We do not usually think of hell as being cold. It takes some thought, and perhaps some research, to realize that Ozick might be referring to Dante’s Inferno, where the coldness at the center of hell is reserved for those who commit the worst of sins: betrayal.

At the opening of the story, Stella’s coldness seems external. Her body is cold. As the story progresses, Stella’s coldness is one of the things that causes her to steal Magda’s shawl. We are told that after the theft and Magda’s death, Stella is “always cold, always. The cold went into her heart: Rosa saw that Stella’s heart was cold.” The repetition of the words “cold” and “always” helps to ensure that the reader notices the coldness. That repetition occurs immediately following the only place in the story where we actually hear Stella’s words, as she explains that she stole Magda’s shawl because “I was cold.” This single short patch of dialogue also serves to draw the reader’s attention to the coldness.

Because the coldness is so closely associated with Stella, it might be easy to conclude that the hell only relates to her. But we are also told that the concentration camp they are in is “a place without pity” and that “all pity was annihilated” — a word associated with death — “in Rosa.” The hell is all around them and inside them. The closing scene, where we watch step by step as the baby Magda is electrocuted, is surely an image of hell.

The role of the shawl when we examine its relationship to hell is to comfort, and perhaps to make this hell a little less wretched. At the story’s beginning, Magda is comforted by being in her mother’s arms, “wrapped in a shawl. . . rocked by the march.” Rosa is also somewhat comforted, since her baby is safe for the moment. The shawl also represents comfort to Stella, though it is not comforting to her at this moment. She envies Magda for being wrapped in the shawl and rocked in her mother’s arms. She wishes the comfort represented by the shawl could be hers.

The shawl’s ability to hide Magda at this point saves her life. The shawl saves her life in another way too — it is a magic shawl which can “nourish an infant for three days and three nights.” Its ability to stave off starvation is another source of comfort for Magda and Rosa. As Magda becomes older, the shawl comforts the girl in another way. It becomes her “baby, her pet, her little sister.” It even causes her to laugh “when the wind blew its corners.” Stella still envies Magda’s shawl, which she is now not even allowed to touch.

Stella’s desperate need for some bit of comforting, however small, is one of the reasons she finally takes Magda’s shawl for herself. She covers herself with it — perhaps gaining some tiny measure of warmth along with the security of being covered by the magic shawl — and falls asleep. Magda, having lost her comforter, wanders into the barracks square screaming. She is discovered by the Nazi guards and immediately killed. As this occurs, Rosa runs to the barracks and retrieves the shawl. The thought that she might be able to use it to somehow save Magda comforts her momentarily. But she cannot save Magda. Now the shawl’s role of saving people returns: Rosa fills her mouth with the shawl, stifling her scream. If she had screamed, she too would have been killed.

The shawl is not a great or impressive item. Yet, at least in the minds of the characters in this story, the shawl is able to save and to comfort. Perhaps the shawl can be seen as an object used to show us how strong the human will to survive is. It is a small thing, but it is the only thing available to these people in this situation. They turn to it, reaching for whatever chance for survival it might offer.

Source: Tery Griffin, “Overview of ‘The Shawl’,” in Short Stories for Students, Gale, 1998.

What Do I Read Next?

• Ozick’s works of nonfiction — Art and Ardor, published in 1987, Metaphor and Memory, published in 1989, and Fame and Folly, published in 1996 — discuss literature, Ozick’s feelings about her art, and her ideas about the relationship between art and history.
• Ozick’s story “Rosa,” published in The New Yorker in 1983, then in a short story collection paired with “The Shawl,” picks up the story of Rosa and Stella some thirty years after the final scene of “The Shawl.” It carries over some of the themes and images from the earlier story.
• Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night (1960) portrays Wiesel’s own experiences as a teenager imprisoned in two concentration camps, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At least one critic, Elaine Kauvar, believes there are allusions to Night in “The Shawl.”
• Anne Frank’s The Diary of Anne Frank describes the life of a Jewish family trying to elude capture by the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. It is written by a young Jewish girl, a girl of about the age that Stella is in “The Shawl.”