Jay HauserPeriod 7Human Conscience

Liberation Journal

In my eyes, the ultimate goal of an author, regardless of genre, is to write a text so

moving that it paints a picture in the mind of the reader. For me, what really drives the mental-

movie process is a wealth of emotion provided by the writer. For this reason, the reading from

Liberation was particularly haunting in a way This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen was

not. While I understand and respect the reasoning behind the author's choice to write in a matter-

of-fact tone, it didn't evoke a mental-movie as www achieved by Liberation.

One particularly disturbing moment from Liberation was the brief moment of

cannibalism, which was all the more disgusting when paired with the gruesome and involuntary

mental images. I will probably never forget reading that part of the text due to the shock behind

it. Looking back, I can conclude that there are two reasons why this moment in particular was so

evocative. At time time, the story was being read out loud, and I was following along as opposed

to reading ahead. More importantly, to my knowledge, this was the first we read about

cannibalism at the camps. From an intellectual standpoint including a large amount of hindsight

bias, it does not surprise me that that particular line was crossed at the camps. I put two and two

together in that moment, when we were reading out loud.

Based on the aforementioned reasons, it is plain to see why This Way to the Gas, Ladies

and Gentlemen did not provide any memorable reaction. While the occurrences in the story are

terrible, they are not anything we haven’t read before. It sounds cynical and is selfish of me to

complain. I know and I apologize.