A Scrap of Time and Other Stories - Themes and Motifs

Themes and Motifs

• "Tramatized Language", an idea coined by Brinkley and Arsenault, is the idea that language can no longer be the same, as it was, before the experience of trauma, in particular, that of the Holocaust. This is because World War II has created a global effect on the world's psyche, and therefore, words have failed to express the terrors of such events. Even, once such simple, romantic notions, like "tree", have taken on a sinister connotation. To a survivor, a tree may connote lynching, therefore the word has become tramatized. A Scrap of Time is filled will such tramatized language.

• "Life versus Death" is a key theme to understanding the Holocaust. In this collection, it relates to how the living become dead, before they are killed - meaning that the living, after losing all sense of hope, lose their will to live. They no longer continue to struggle, but rather follow instructions, as commanded, to their death.

• "Animals Being More Human the Humanity" is the idea that the animals are more human than the humans in Fink's stories. The SS soldiers act as brutal killers, void of humanity. The animals found in various stories, take on the role of protecting or guiding the Jewish victims. There are several references to the SS soldiers to being pigs.

• "Nature's Revolt, or the Refusal of Nature's Revolt" is the idea that though such terrible events are occurring everyday (in the novel) Nature continues as if nothing is wrong. Only once in the 165 pages of short stories is there a reference to Nature making a revolt (which in found in *). The other stories typically take place in the Spring time or in the Morning, when everything is becoming alive. The birds can be heard singing between the gunfire. Grass grows above and around the fallen bodies. The Natural world seems to exist outside of the war, but around the war at the same time. Metaphorically, since the war is man-made, it is of no concern to the natural world.