Fatelessness, by Imre Kertész is a literary work that doesn't just describe the society of those times, but portrays life in Europe, specially as a jew in countries under the influence and control of the German Reich, and as stated in the task, he criticises it. The author of this novel uses Gyuri, the protagonist, to show us how the war and the german's ambitious plans affected jewish families.
First of all, this novel was written in 1975, a long time after the world war II. Imre Kertész is a survivor of the holocaust, and by knowing this and a few details of his life, for example that he was from Budapest, we can infer that it is an autobiographical novel. In other words, Gyuri is a projection of Kertész's life. By knowing this, we already know the context of the story, which will be one of the main topics in this essay.
I think Kertész uses different methods to show us how irrational, or in simpler words, how terrible the society was at those times, specially against jews. But there are also some other methods that he doesn't use, like hyperbole. When he is describing the environment where he is placed, I think it may be accurate to what it really was instead of an exaggerated definition. For example, in the following quote: "QUOTE". This represents his writing style, it is realistic, because it is based on real events, this meaning the language, the characters and the setting is realistic too.
In the novel, we expect Gyuri to completely dislike the concentration camps and its unfairness, cruelty and other negligible qualities. But he doesn't, in different occasions he states that he likes concentration camps, mostly when he is in Buchenwald. For example in the following quote: "It is fair to say that I too soon came to like Buchenwald." It is interesting because in his "other life", he never gave us any clues that he didn't like it, so the question is: Why would he like the concentration camps where his people and himself are being enslaved and killed? I think there are many answers to this question, but probably it is a way of neglecting them, because as we know, he doesn't feel part of his culture, so maybe as a teenager he tries to be rebellious, or to fit somewhere by going against them because to fit somewhere, you must be part of the popular group, and jews weren't exactly the popular group. On the other side, there is also the fact that Gyuri didn't really know everything about the camps when he said this. He had only heard rumors about the gas chambers, but he never saw them. So maybe he just liked the simplicity of life inside the concentration camps.
Now, going back to the question, I think the author makes an implicit critic by setting Gyuri with that point of view, because basically he may be telling us how people who "weren't jewish" didn't understand how the discrimination of the minorities felt, or how the ones who are different, are constantly discriminated, for example when his jewish partners told him "You are not a jew", so in the end it's a general critic against discrimination of the ones who are different.
Starting another point, in the novel, when he was being annoyed by fleas, he just gave up and let them be there. "After a while, indeed I gave up and just watched the gluttony, the teeming, the voracity, the appetite, the unconcealed happiness; in a manner of speaking, it was as though it were vaguely familiar to me from somewhere". This quote can be analyzed in many aspects. First I'll start with figures of speech and rhetorical devices. As we can see, the author uses different figures of speech through the text, and in this case, he uses a pleonasm, this means he uses different words with the same meaning to emphasize what he is trying to say, "gluttony, teeming, voracity, appetite" they are synonyms and he is trying to give us a picture of how disgusting and "wild" it must've been to feel them eating your skin. Also, there is an irony when he says that the fleas eating him, was vaguely familiar to him. It's obvious that it's familiar to him because he is starving, in terrible conditions and he understands the fleas, he gives up because he feels the same thing they do, and no longer worries. As we could see with this quote, the author's writing style has long detailed descriptions, and as I pointed out before, he doesn't exaggerate using hyperbole, but he uses other figures of speech, like pleonasm, to help us get a better image of what he is describing.
With the same quote, I can explain the narration of the novel. It was written in first person, and the narrator is Gyuri. As the narrator, he tells us from his own experience what happened, what he saw, what he thought, which enriches the novel because it makes us feel "close" to the narrator, it makes the reader, for example, feel empathy when his leg was being eaten by fleas.
For my last point, I'm going to refer to smoker who was another teenager who was in the concentration camp. "I once asked him what he found so great about smoking so much, to which he replied "it's cheaper than food"" I think that in this quote there are two critics present. First, he criticizes the war, because during war there are difficulties to get supplies, people starve due to increases in the price of food. And second, if we relate it with the beginning of the book, where thef allowing quote is: "It is well known in the neighborhood that he could not abide jews. That was also why the bread he pushed at me was a good half pound short." Again, we can see discrimination which made it difficult for the jews to get food.
As it can be seen in the quotes I chose, the author uses indirect narration, because he is just telling the story for the sake of it. He isn't aware that the reader exists, who becomes a witness to what's happening in the story. This causes a particular effect on the reader because, indirect narration doesn't make us feel part of the story and what the narrator is telling us, but first person narrator, as I said before makes us feel part of the story, like if we were inside Gyuri's head, hearing every thought and experiencing the same things he is.
In conclusion, the book is a critic to society, specifically to the society of the 1930's-1940's. The context here is important because it refers to discrimination and poverty which the war caused. It is also giving a message to the world, because it shows that war only ends in disgraces. That's why I think this book is an important representative and critic to world war II.
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