The Address Reading Response

The Address is a short story following the first person narrative of Marga Minco. Taking place in the post Holocaust era, the story demonstrates the effects the war had on her. Her story doesn't go into detail about how she fared during the war, or the difficulties she would have encountered. It takes a more personal tone, explaining how being a fugitive, on the run, has affected her, without any account of her journey. The story speaks merely of nostalgia.

Returning to see relics of her past, it should be assumed the narrator was searching for some form of closure. However, once she found 46 Marconistraat, and entered, nostalgia struck. This was where her family's belonging's had been kept. She seemed to however feel relatively disappointed, as though rediscovering her past belongings should summon all that was once good.  I find I can greatly relate to this sentiment. I, like many people, try to find closure in various things, and I always seem to end up unsatisfied by the closure, or at least, not satisfied in the way I would expect. I figure this is due to the fact that I develop a vivid memory of how something made me feel, and how it affected me. This sets a certain precedent for how I should feel when I encounter it again. The problem is that I have evolved since my past experiences and so the things that made me feel a certain way, say five years ago, no longer have that same effect. I would assume that having experienced the war, the narrator would have obviously changed after going through that, making her past items a little less valuable sentimentally.

'But gradually everything had become normal again. There was bread which was steadily becoming lighter in colour.' This passage essentially says that the war had changed her perspective. It had perhaps made her apathetic to the world around her. Not being able to enjoy the world to the same extent, seeing everything as 'darker', could be compared to some form of clinical depression. It also implies that her view of material possession had changed, objects became less important. This reminded me of when I had good friend of mine killed in a car accident, a couple years. I went through a very similar period of darkness, and possible depression. The circumstances were obviously different, but i believe that they don't have to be to feel that way.

The whole story reminded of the details of grandfather experience through out the war. He was a Polish and Jewish citizen who was taken captive by Russians and brought to a syberian work camp. When he would recount the story he explained everything with a very disconnected tone, as though it didn't matter or it wasn't a substantially difficult experience. He was almost indifferent about it, as was the narrator in 'The Address'.