Lily Orgeron - Distinction Presentation

4/13/2019 9:00 AM to 4/13/2019 10:00 AM

CPT - Center for Performance & Technology - Open Computer Lab - T227 - T227

Gernany's Nazified Children: Studying the Relationship Between Empathy and Indoctrination in Germany's Youth Through Literature

The children of Nazi Germany were inevitably affected by Hitler's regime. Children, in many ways, are blank slates, and the Third Reich, knowing the importance of the youth for the future, established systems to specifically appeal to children. In the two novels, Max by Sarah Cohen-Scali and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, the child protagonists, to varying extents, are indoctrinated into Nazi ideology. It is the unique circumstances of the characters and their exposure to different perspectives, however, that initiate a deprogramming of sorts: the protagonists gradually lose their enchantment with Nazism. This evolution is the focal point of my research. I use the two books mentioned above, as well as critical sources, to better understand the lesser-known half of the story: the children's individual paths away from bigotry and toward tolerance. I am studying the roots of the extremist ideology that shape each child and, through a theoretical framework that focuses on empathy, analyzing how the children grow to reject their indoctrination. Nazi Germany was a time when hate and bigotry reigned, inevitably influencing the youth. I show how the children were able to break away from such a mindset, though the lens of fiction.

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