Journal 12 : The Events of the Summer

Lorenzo was an interesting character to notice, although Primo introduced him slightly in this chapter. In the start, Primo stated “’When things change, they change for the worse’ was one of the proverbs of the camp. More generally, experience had shown us many times the vanity of every conjecture… (pg 116)” I think this quote was significant of affirming that EVERYBODY changes in a worst way. As mentioned in the previous chapters, no morality exists inside the barbed wire world, thus everybody does not recognize that they are changing in an evil way. They were all being destroyed over time. However, Lorenzo was different. “In concrete terms it amounts to little: an Italian civilian worker brought me a piece of bread and the remainder of his ration every day for six months; he gave me a vest of his, full of patches; he wrote a postcard on my behalf to Italy and brought me the reply. For all this he neither asked nor accepted any reward, because he was good and simple and did not think that one did good for a reward (pg 119).”

By reading the quote, I could feel that Lorenzo was the only one who could still maintain of being a “human” among the beasts inside the prison. As a “human,” he felt he had done the right thing when he was helping Primo and did not expect any rewards from him. Honestly, I could not understand Lorenzo’s behavior at the first time. Why bother to help others when he himself is also struggling to survive? Rather than sharing a piece of bread to another person or sending a postcard for someone else, I would gladly eat the whole piece of bread by myself and send only my postcard to my behalf. However, I also realized my humanity was becoming contaminated as well as the other “beasts” existing inside the camps. Even I, as a reader, feel it is RIGHT to be selfish if I get to live inside the society of concentration camps, since it is the only way to survive among the severe conditions and prisoners. But Lorenzo was different. As Primo stated at the end, “Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man. (pg 122)”