Journal Entry 9

March 7, 2007

Chapter 9. The Drowned and the Saved

Passage:
Thousands of individuals, differing in age, condition, origin, language, culture and customs, are enclosed within barbed wire: there they live a regular, controlled life which is identical for all and inadequate to all needs, and which is more rigorous than any experimenter could have set up to establish what is essential and what adventitious to the conduct of human animal in the struggle for life. (pg. 87)

I enjoy watching horror movies or thrill movies. People find that quite awkward. Sometimes I'm even astounded by the excitement I get out of horror or thrill movies. Fear and darkness are distinctively portrayed from these type of movies, and knowing that, I still find it interesting to view. Saw 1 is one of the most thought-provoking yet exciting movies I've seen so far. It is definitiely violent and cruel. It is about a murder who doesn't actually murder his victims. He plays games with his victims; kind of like an experiment. He tests the limits of how much men are crazy for survival and how desperate men become when they are faced with death.

An example:
The murderer would tie the first man alive to the ground so that he isn't able to use any of his limbs. Then he would force the man to swallow a key. A second man is waken up in a room where a timer has been set to explode in several minutes. The only tool he is given is a knife, and there is the first man still 'alive' lying on the floor. The only way for the second man to survive is to rip open the stomach of the first man and dig for the keys in his intestine. Guess what happened... The second man was driven insane and he ripped open the stomach of the first man alive and found the keys between his intestines and unlocked the bomb.

In this chapter, we can relate the movie to Auschwitz. Through facts we know that the establishment of Auschwitz and the purpose for it is to terminate Jews and other non-Aryan race; however, there seems to be something more deeper the Germans wanted to test. They wanted to observe the conduct of the human animal in the struggle for life. This shows that the Jews, Haftlinge, or other prisoners were considered to be tools. It's amazing of what men are capable of doing ... It surprises me the indifferent attitudes of the Germans towards other race. How is this possible?