Chapter 11

“And after ‘ When I came?’ Nothing. A hole in my memory. ‘Before Aeneas ever named it so.’ Another hole. A fragment floats into my mind, not relevant: ‘...nor piety To my old father, not the wedded love That should have comforted Penelope...’, is it correct?(112)”

Its funny that poetry can represent our lives so well. In this case what Primo and his friend are saying is not exactly what they feel, it’s a quote from a book. But yet, its so similar to their own memory. They hardly know where they came from. The things in the past are not important anymore. As a Jewish girl named Raga once said that is isn’t important about where she came from, but that she was Jew. Because is isn’t. In the concentration camp, you cannot use your old lifestyle to get you through. The concentration camp has rules that don’t make sense. The have also forgot things of the past because of that. Because they are forced to make a new lifestyle to live, they forget their old self and the knowledge that they used to have. But what is happening here is important, this could have been the reason Primo survived. He remembered the past because his friend concealed him from the concentration camp for only a few minutes. He became something more then living. He became more then just atoms. He became a man. But the end of the poetry also has meaning. In the end it talks about how the love that penelope got never satisfied her, and how he didn’t respect his dad. This is what the concentration camp also is. No respect, no love. There is nothing here but wasteland. Again, it was fortunate for Primo to realize that he still has some sort of living soul within him.