The Sunflower Book Essay Instructions This paper has two parts. PART I Write a paper in which you put two of The Sunflower respondents into a dialogue i

The Sunflower Book Essay Instructions

This paper has two parts.

PART I

Write a paper in which you put two of The Sunflower respondents into a dialogue in order to accurately reflect the complexity of their arguments.

You can choose anyone from The Sunflower, except Wiesenthal and the respondents we have discussed in class. Ideally, these respondents should represent different perspectives on the issue of forgiveness, though they might have some common areas of agreement. This dialogue should foreground the respondents’ position on forgiveness, honoring the complexity of their ideas with clarity and accuracy. You should set the dialogue in a particular context: a talk show, a game show, a walk through the park, etc. You might also employ a moderator, or host, to ask questions and mediate the conversation.

Part ll

Chart EACH of your two respondents’ arguments using the Toulmin method. In other words, answer the following questions: What are the respondents’ main claims? What are their reasons? Their warrants? Also identify any rhetorical or persuasive techniques the respondents use when making their arguments

Purpose

Your purpose is to put at least two respondents into a dialogue that clearly and accurately reflects the complexity of their views on forgiveness. Remember, this is a dialogue, or conversation, not an argument. Your primary purpose is to make clear both respondents’ views on forgiveness. Although they will express disagreement, their goal is not to win the argument but to come to a more enlightened understand of each other.

Audience

Your audience is readers who are familiar with Simon Wiesenthal’s central narrative and question in The Sunflower, but who may not be familiar with your two respondents.

Grading Criteria

Does your project put at least two respondents into a dialogue that clearly and accurately reflects the complexity of their views on forgiveness? Is the dialogue structured clearly and smoothly so that readers can follow the sequence of the respondents’ thoughts on forgiveness? Is the dialogue given a creative context to help clarify and mediate the conversation? Is the dialogue mostly free of grammatical and mechanical errors that might interfere with a reader’s understanding? Is your argument chart accurate and thoughtful? Do you answer all the questions? ALAN L. BERGER
ook The Sunglasses
actable. Students
non tighe Whe
repentance
gen
My own thoughts
w can traditional
d to monstrous
vels of meaning
character of this
nce in the death
sence of the dead
they convey di
dered? My response is, do not forgive someone for whom for-
giveness is forbidden. Judaism teaches that there are two types
of sins. One is that committed by humans against God, beyn
humans against other humans, beyn adam le-adam. I may forgive
adam le-makom. The second type consists of sin committed by
one who has sinned against me. I may not forgive one who has
taken the life of another.
thoughts are firm. Simon should, and could, not
forgive on behalf of those so cruelly murdered. Further, in ask-
ing for a Jew to hear his confession Karl perpetuated the Nazi
stereotype
. Jews were not individuals with souls, feelings, aspi-
rations, and emotions. Rather, they were perceived as an amor-
phous
, undifferentiated mass. Bring me a Jew, was the dying
Nazi’s request. Any Jew will do. Karl has learned nothing. His
desire is to “cleanse” his own soul at the expense of the Jew.
Was Karl’s repentance sincere? Repentance in Hebrew
comes from the word teshuvah, meaning a turning away from
evil
, a turning toward Torah. It is a process rather than a single
act
. When it mattered, when he shot Jews jumping from a
burning house, Karl displayed no moral courage. Recent stud-
ies have demonstrated that there were those who disobeyed
orders
, took a moral stance, and were not punished. It is far
more difficult to act morally than immorally. Repentance is
formulaic: a learned ritual which soothes the troubled soul of
the murderer, but does nothing for those who were murdered.
Is it morally possible to say, “I am sorry for the Holocaust”?
Or to apologize for individual acts of murder whose great ag-
gregate yielded the murder of millions of Jews?
here. Presumably, Karl, achieving forgiveness, would go to heaven.
The entire issue of cheap grace, forgive and forget, is raised
fusion. Stunned
ow which way to
of Judaism and
goal was the er
econd silence is a
ss to the mother
ain by telling de
is memory
was a
2 proper place i
e been a deseci
cims and of the
question raises:
alf of the mur
119
24
ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN
will be their fate as well. And there is nothing they can do
can even
about it.
after twent
geance on
jailers
. Or
muista fight
confronting
titled him
Borge respo
Such it
of us cand
giveness or
rather than
We ca
mitigate so
but in all ir
This strikes resonating chords with the scene Simon
Wiesenthal has created for us, in which Jews of all ages are
locked in a house that is then set on fire.
Both episodes strain to the breaking point any contention
that forgiveness would be appropriate within such circum-
stances. If God forgives such deeds, does not that likewise
strain to the breaking point any contention that the universe of
God’s creation is a moral universe? A malevolent deity might be
placed in charge of such arrangements but surely not a god of
mercy and compassion.
And if God is not entitled to forgive, surely the same moral
boundary is placed around God’s children. To forgive the Nazis
who threw children on the fire and locked them in houses to be
incinerated is to become one with the Nazis, endorsing evil
deeds rather than combatting evil deeds, and thereby becoming
complicit in their actions.
Jews and Christians usually cope with the dilemma by af-
firming that God, rather than being removed from evil, is found
in the midst of the evil, identifying with the victims rather than the
perpetrators. So the Jewish imagery of the “Suffering Servant”
in the Book of Isaiah avers, and so the Christian imagery
Christ suffering on the cross likewise avers
. But, as Elie Wiesel
suggests in Ani Maamin, such a deliverance comes too late—six
million deaths too late_and such a God seems powerless to be
more than a remorseful deity who can endure but cannot en-
able.
But perhaps there are situations where sacrificial love,
with forgiveness at the heart of it, can make a difference
, and
One canno
the philoso
what He’s
So, hac
denying to
have urged
God, and t
of
t
something
other.
How c
ther sentin
to Elie Wie
1. I do
question,
character a
122
122
to
nd especially the
would not. If the
ically deficient a
ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN
bility, then sham
d shame on those
others the moral
.
rl either was not
had pangs of con-
the penitents? O:
s who either gath
”
or simply resume
ng, and shaking his
olocaust?
nce was deeply dis-
is fellow prisoners
Warsaw
, 1979. We are standing in front of the memorial to
those Jews who lost their lives defending the Warsaw Ghetto. It
is raining. A personal friend who survived that battle is giving
an impassioned address. It is in Polish. Several days later he
gives me a copy of the translation. The passion carries over into
English. The theme is clear: Never forget, never forgive.
That we must never forget is perhaps the clearest lesson of
the Holocaust. For if we forget, a time will come when even
worse atrocities will be committed against Jews, and any
others
whom those with power wish to destroy.
That we must never forgive would seem to follow from the
same stern logic. For if we forgive, it will be a sign to those
in the future that they can act without fear of punishment, and
that the universe has a moral escape valve labeled “forgive-
ness” that permits evil not only to survive but to thrive. On this
reading, forgiveness becomes a “weak” virtue, one that Chris-
particularly prone to champion, and one that always
carries the possibility of condoning, rather than constricting,
the spread of evil.
I remain uneasy with the second conviction.
upon him. In re-
rder committed by
ffering displayed by
tians seem
present this evidence
And
yet,
e which has become
not what Karl de
vs for bringing con
nurderer forgiveness
n. Had he spoken to
ilt.
Consider the absolutely worst-case scenario. It is in Auschwitz
on a day when the gas chambers are falling behind their quotas.
To accelerate the pace, children are lined up and thrown upon
open flames. Those toward the back of the line know full
well that in a matter of moments the fate of those
up
front
the
12
3
ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN
nista
such inte
ot that likein
at the universi
at des de
not a gaudir
rely not a
even empower. One thinks of Nelson Mandela, released
fter twenty-seven years in jail
, patently entitled to wreak ven
.
geance on his tormentors, and who responds by forgiving his
Tomas Borge, a
fighter, captured by the contras and brutally tortured,
confronting his torturer after the war had ended. The court en-
vided him to name the punishment appropriate for his torturer
.
Borge responded, “My punishment is to forgive you.”
Such instances build up a moral capital on which the rest
of us can draw: supposing, just supposing, that an act of for-
giveness on our part could tip the scales toward compassion
rather than brutality …
We can propound these and other examples that might
mitigate some of the harshness of the imperative Never forgive,
but in all instances we are exploring only exceptions to the rule.
zis, endorsing ei
One cannot allow, as a human axiom, a position such as that of
thereby becoming the philosopher-poet Heinrich Heine, “God will forgive, that’s
what He’s here for.”
So, had I been in Simon Wiesenthal’s position, fearful of
d from evil stadenying too much or of promising too little, I think I would
have urged the young man to address his plea directly to
God, and throw himself on the possibility of Divine Mercy,
something I am not permitted to adjudicate one way or the
ly the same mon
forgive the Nati
em in houses tode
the dilemma by a
tims rather than the
other.
“Suffering Seruan
Christian imgerd
* But as Elie Wiese
comes too l12
How could I justify such a response, refusing to grant ei-
ther sentimentalized mercy or hard-nosed judgment? I return
to Elie Wiesel, to offer two responses in the form of questions:
question, “Where is God in all this?”-a question on the lips of
character after character in Wiesel’s novels. The closer I come to
I do not believe we can supply an answer to the first
seems powerless work
adre but cannot et
her carta de
male cienza
123
? a
(2152
& Ca Lluc
2
HARRY JAMES CARGAS
As we
out to a ki
problem:
years, in Sp
the word!
asking if th
was a contin
fascist leade
camps).
inad
what might be called an “answer,” the more circumspect I must
become, although I must keep trying, keep trying to do so. I
will always come up short.
2. What we can do on the far side of such an impasse is to
respond to another question and truly make it our own. In
Wiesel’s The Gates of the Forest, a rebbe, confronted with evil and
God’s transparent involvement in it, asks out of deep anguish
“What is there left for us to do?”
This is what we must exhume from the debris of our
equate “answers.” What “answers” there are will finally
· minds, but from the precincts of
our hearts. It will be in doing rather than in speculating that we
will learn whatever it is permitted us to learn.
“What is there left for us to do?” Only everything from
doing justly, loving-kindness, and walking humbly with God
do so, perhaps, just perhaps, a world will begini
to standing with the victims and the oppressed. And if we
to emerge in
which we do not have to ask unanswerable questions any
come
Forgiver
our
derstood, in
well turn ou
Perhaps whe
person
that
“Who am 1
Yet forgi
necessary to
cases? In Chr
able sin. The
longer.
tery, many of
For mett
forgive Karl,
time which
hend

Purchase answer to see full
attachment