A Priveleged Response: Thoughts on Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl"

In a country where nursing mother's breasts are full and baby bellies are bulging from food instead of bloating with air, it is hard to imagine the plight of those families who are in such hopeless circumstances as Rosa, Stella, and Magda in Ozick's short story "The Shawl". In America, many are insulated from the horrors of humanity that are occurring in third world countries where refuge is hard to find from political oppression or economic hardship. It is depressing to think that someone would ever consider such a flimsy object like a piece of cloth as a source of protection, but I doubt anyone in Rosa's place would have acted differently. Though the shawl is temporary, it symbolized a shadow of hope amid the ills of humanity.

Ozick allows the characters to bleed into her reader's minds, staining them with images of violence and truth. The character’s indifference towards their circumstance is maddening for the reader, but also evokes a deep compassion and sympathy. The horrors committed at the death camps, unfortunately, did not stop with the end of World War Two, but continue to this very day amid different people groups, including the genocide in Cambodia during the '70s, or the Rwandans in the '90s, or the Sudanese during this very hour. Undoubtedly, the implied reaction of the reader to such a provocative story is, "What could I do to help remedy this?" Hopefully, in such a privileged nation as America, advocacy instead of indifference will be their answer.