타데우슈 보롭스키의 홀로코스트 소설과 정체성의 문제

Abstract

The concept of identity is mainly based on one’s relation to one’s urroundings and the perception of oneself. These are all important topics when reading Borowski’s stories. In his stories, the narrator is forced to change locations several times as a victim of war and a political prisoner. His physical rroundings as well as his emotional and psychological responses to the people and the environment around him are extremely important because his very survival depends on them. In Borowski’s stories one can see that the narrator’s identity evolves quite fluidly as he moves around from the streets of Warsaw to Pawiak prison, to Auschwitz and to different sub-camps of Auschwitz and to Dachau. When discussing personal identity and changing locations, one may say that Borowski’s wartime and Holocaust stories chronicle the destruction of a person in all aspects of existence: physical,psychological, moral and even spiritual. In Borowski’s stories, the narrator gradually changes from a young adult with hopes for a better future to a hardened concentration camp prisoner who does not hesitate to laugh at other people’s sufferings and death. The narrator’s survival after all the atrocities is itself a tragic one, because he survived not to be free but only to become a prisoner to the core of his heart and soul. And since these stories are also testimonies of one of the greatest tragedies of human history, one may also see it as a testimony of the inner devastation of a generation as well as that of an entire nation and its culture.