In Charlotte Delbo's “Days and Memory” and Cynthia Ozick's “The Shawl”, both stories speak very much of motherhood in concentration camps and how these mothers copes, but both do so in extremely different ways. Delbo does a very good job of writing eloquently and fluidly to speak of the story of the Gypsy woman who even though her child was dead, she still chose to defend her with her life. She uses vivid language and metaphors in order to make the pieces that people who are not Holocaust survivors can understand, such as the molting of a snake to reveal new skin to the new skin of a Holocaust prisoner trying to return home and try to let go of their former self. In doing this, Delbo lets us into a very personal and private story but with her use of language and tone, still provides enough information for us to really be moved and for us as an audience to be able to relate in some way. In doing this, it makes her story as whole easier to understand, especially when juxtaposed next to Ozick’s “The Shawl”.

In Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl”, Ozick uses short and choppy sentences and tough to figure out metaphors in order to tell the story of a woman who had two kids and one who was slowly dying of starvation due to lack of breast milk from her mother. I found this story much harder to read because of the style of writing that she chose to use. It was very personal, but it was much harder to understand because the metaphors used weren’t very clear, even to someone who always tends to read between the lines. At the end of this story, I was confused, not moved - as I was with Delbo’s narrative. Though the language doesn’t make any situation more real, it was definitely harder to sympathize with a story that I did not quite understand due to the lack descriptive imagery and information in Ozick’s compared to Delbo’s.