Zizzy Zizzlefritz

Eng. 10, per 3

11-8-11

Briar Rose essay

The Worst Can Make the Best

Have you ever met a hero? Wars are terrible events with many bad things happening. But fortunately, wars also enable heroes to emerge. Briar Rose is a novel about an old lady, Gemma, who keeps telling the story Sleeping Beauty to her grandkids. Once she dies, her granddaughter, Becca, goes to Poland to discover her grandmother’s past. Becca learns that Gemma was a Holocaust survivor and experienced many similar events as the story Sleeping Beauty. Even though there were many bad events in World War II, this story showed many heroes. This story shows that war brings out the best in people.

One example of the good brought out of people in this story was when Josef helps ksieznicka escape from Europe and flee to America. Josef was a selfish homosexual, thinking only of himself, until late in the story, when he gives Gemma his passport, a family ring, and other documents to help her escape Poland.

“So they forged papers for her in the name of Eva Potocki, and Josef gave her his stepfather’s ring and his passport photograph in case she needed further corroboration. She would be a Polish princess traveling incognito, he told her.” (p186)

Josef certainly did not have to do all that for this girl. All of these actions can be seen to mean that Josef had changed from being selfish to being selfless. That is the true meaning of a hero.

Heroes were not limited to single individuals; there were also the partisan fighters. These were the refugees who escaped the Germans and continued to fight against the Germans in a guerrilla-type of warfare. These heroic people continued to fight against all odds. Many knew that they would eventually be killed because they were so over-matched.

“The storage depot was not one building but three great silos. Henrik’s plan had been simple; he had drawn it with a stick on the muddy ground. Those with guns would be in the forefront, those without guns behind. They would rush the small wooden house in which the depot manager lived, take him prisoner, find something with which to blow up the silos, and escape.

“Melt back into the woods,” Henrik said.”(p157)

This shows the simple plans of these partisans, but matched up against a well-supplied army, it would take a real hero to pull these attacks off. Again, wars sometimes create heroes.

Besides the heroes created during the war, sometimes wars bring out the hero in individuals long after the fighting is over. Father Stashu saw the pain of the townspeople in Chelmo long after the war. He devoted the next 30 years of his life to help these people seek forgiveness for the terrible things they did. “I knew I had to stay to help these poor people cleanse their souls. It became my life’s work.” (p124) Father Stashu said he wanted to move up the ladder in the Catholic Church and be successful in his career as a priest. But he gave that up to help the townspeople of Chelmo seek repentance for the evil they had participated in. Sometimes heroes develop years later.

Briar Rose demonstrated that good can come out of bad situations. People do rise to the call in bad times. Single individuals such as Josef, groups of fighters such as the partisans, and even priests years later all answer the call of heroism. Sad to say, we are still engaged in wars even today. But amidst the killing and carnage, heroes emerge to show us the goodness of humanity. We are surrounded by heroes all the time, but sadly, sometimes it takes a war to reveal them.