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Chapter 10. Chemical Examination
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Survival in Auschwitz, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dehumanization and Resistance
Adaptability, Chance, and Survival
Moral Relativity
Racial Hierarchy
Oppression, Power, and Cruelty
Summary
Analysis
As the men of the Chemical Kommando are working, Jean arrives. Jean is a teenager, the Kommando’s messenger-clerk, which is itself quite a powerful position among the prominents. Although Alex has kept his promise to be “violent and unreliable,” Jean has skillfully ingratiated himself to Alex—in part by realizing that Alex is ruthless towards his workers, but utterly fearful of the civilian workers, the SS, and anyone who outranks him. As a result, this spares the underlings much of Alex’s fury. Jean is well-liked by all, and Levi has struck up a recent friendship with him.
Alex is further revealed to be a coward, frightened of anyone he does not explicitly outrank, which only increases the perversity of his leading a Kommando of intellectuals. Once again, this serves to highlight the absurdity of the Germans’ believed racial hierarchy, demonstrating that it is a baseless concept that does not have any bearing in reality.
Themes
Jean selects Levi to help him retrieve the noon ration with him, a walk which can easily be stretched to an hour. As they walk, they discuss their past lives, their family, the languages each can speak. Levi decides that he should like to try and teach Jean Italian, and begins by attempting to translate into French and explain the Canto of Ulysses in Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The effort makes Levi feel capable and full of possibility, and Jean is able to understand much of it, relating it to experiences he has had in his own life. Levi, struggling to piece it together, feels as if he is hearing it again “for the first time […] like the voice of God,” and he briefly forgets who he is and all that has happened to him. Jean can see that it does Levi’s spirit good, and enthusiastically engages with him.
Although Levi does not explicitly connect his desire to teach Jean Italian to the thrill he felt in recalling his knowledge of chemistry before Pannwitz, it seems likely that they were connected. For the past three months, Levi has kept his head down and taught himself not to think or consider anything beyond pain, cold, and hunger. Like the examination, Levi’s thoroughly intellectual conversation with Jean suggests that his humanity is beginning to return to him and be strengthened by utilizing his mental faculties once again.
Themes
Levi gets stuck on one part of the canto, unsure how it connected together and how to express it in French. They reach the queue to receive their pot of soup to carry back, but Levi holds Jean back for a moment. It seems desperately important that he understand Dante and the Middle Ages, the various literary devices and cultural forces at play, because tomorrow either of them may be dead or they might never see each other again, such as things are in the Lager.
Levi’s desperation to make Jean understand a purely intellectual concept—which will not actually help either of them to survive—again suggests that the passions of his former, intellectually rigorous life are beginning to return to him. Although for months he had slowly let go of himself, he is finally beginning to unwittingly resist the dehumanization thrust upon him.
Themes
