Journal Entry 3

February 26, 2007

Chapter 3. Initiation

Initiation means the start or beginning. This chapter showed the entrance of Primo Levi to a new world where everday was a 'daily hallucination' in which one became accustomed to. This thought is scary because being adjusted to such extreme condition might mean that there is something mentally wrong with the person. It is not normal to come to the point where sleepiness is masked by a state of tension and anxiety.

The most memorable part of this chapter was when Primo Levi said that they were like slaves. It's so hard to understand his statement because I've never been deprived of every right. This implies that the people in Auschwitz basically treated as beasts - similar to a chicken farm where the chickes are put into cages, grown, and butchered. Although 'initiation' means beginning, it is in someway the end. It may have been the start of sincere misery; however, it is the end to having the life of a human. It touched me when he mentions that one must want to survive to tell the story of what really happened in these camps. This foreshadows the future destination of Primo Levi because he became the bear witness of the 'Initiation.'