In the story “This way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Borowski uses his imagination to create an exaggerated fictional environment of the concentration camp during WWII. Through a first-person point of view, Borowski depicts the physical and mental torture he witnesses as a prisoner who unloads new arrived prisoners off the train. Under the dehumanized condition, prisoners, German guards, and the narrator manifest human nature to the fullest. It reminds me one of the previous works we have read, “Metamorphosis.” Similar to Borowski’s work, in “Metamorphosis” the narrator has a physical transformation, which eventually exposes his family’s attitude towards him.
In both works, the authors construct plots that are fictional to allude to the themes of human nature, both bright side and dark side. For example, in “This way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” an old female prisoner shows sympathy to the narrator as she acknowledges the harsh reality the narrator has to face, even though he doesn’t feel bad for Jews at all. Or the moment when a little boy is running after his mom while the mom refuses to admit that is her son. Because of the inhuman environment, human nature appears in its purest form. Similarly, Gregor Samsa suffers from isolation from his family after his transformation. Not knowing Gregor Samsa is still a human under his insectile appearance, his family feels embarrassed and hides him from outside world. Moreover, they refuse to acknowledge Gregor for who he is regardless of what he looks like.
Ryan, This is an interesting text-to-text connection. Both texts explore the limits of what it means to be human and also highlight how humans behave in unimaginable situations. One distinction that is worth pointing out, however, is that while Kafka’s work obviously explores something totally fictional (a man turning into an insect), Borowski’s work, though fiction, is entirely based on a real, historical reality. The behavior he describes in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” reflects his own lived experience in Auschwitz. These things actually happened; the atrocities he describes are not a product of his imagination – they are real.