Obese, Stressed-Out 40-Year-Old Blames Holocaust
Introduction
A forty-year-old man sits in the dark in complete silence. His resting heart rate sits at ninety beats per minute. He is severely overweight and suffers from hypertension. He cannot get a job because he experiences anxiety attacks any time he is placed in a stressful situation. He isolates himself from society in order to mitigate his depression. Why does this man have so many disorders? As ludicrous as it sounds, scientists blame the Holocaust. The obese gentleman is suffering because his grandparents passed on traits they developed from surviving the conditions and fears of the Holocaust. This phenomenon is more formally known as epigenetics which The National Center for Biological …show more content…
Rachel Yehuda, the lead researcher on this topic, argues that Nazi Germany’s military influence on the Jewish people through concentration camps not only affected the prisoners at that time, but also the descendants of those who were lucky enough to live. The living conditions and experiences the Jewish people faced in these concentration camps manipulated their gene expression and impacted the genetic code they would pass on to their offspring. Epigenetics and the transfer of genetic code seems to be very complicated in nature, and for that reason, many people cannot understand it. However, literature can help many of us grasp complex ideas, such as epigenetics. If we look at the connection between the Holocaust and epigenetics through the lens of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” the topic of epigenetics become more relatable and easier to understand. Hence, Orwell makes it easier for us to digest the influence of the Nazi Germany military on Holocaust victims and their offspring at the genetic …show more content…
The elephant represents an entire repressed society suffering under imperialism created by “the denial and oppression of differences” between Burma and Great Britain (Heise). This is supported by Edward Quinn’s, a professor of English at the City College of New York, novel Critical Companion to George Orwell: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. In this book, he states that the elephant represents “traditional Burmese culture” and the British under Orwell is trying to destroy this culture through imperialism (Ahmad, and Ahmad). In terms of the Holocaust, the Jewish victims can be represented by the elephant and Orwell by Nazi Germany. The Jews in concentration camps are suffering under the Nazis, just like the elephant, a symbol for the Burmese people, are suffering under Great Britain. The elephant died “very slowly and in great agony” just like Holocaust victims died long painful deaths from starvation, medical experimentation, torture and physical exhaustion (Jabłoński). For those lucky enough to survive, the imperialist practices imposed on the Jews by the Nazi’s effected their genes and contributed to their altered gene
Introduction
A forty-year-old man sits in the dark in complete silence. His resting heart rate sits at ninety beats per minute. He is severely overweight and suffers from hypertension. He cannot get a job because he experiences anxiety attacks any time he is placed in a stressful situation. He isolates himself from society in order to mitigate his depression. Why does this man have so many disorders? As ludicrous as it sounds, scientists blame the Holocaust. The obese gentleman is suffering because his grandparents passed on traits they developed from surviving the conditions and fears of the Holocaust. This phenomenon is more formally known as epigenetics which The National Center for Biological …show more content…
Rachel Yehuda, the lead researcher on this topic, argues that Nazi Germany’s military influence on the Jewish people through concentration camps not only affected the prisoners at that time, but also the descendants of those who were lucky enough to live. The living conditions and experiences the Jewish people faced in these concentration camps manipulated their gene expression and impacted the genetic code they would pass on to their offspring. Epigenetics and the transfer of genetic code seems to be very complicated in nature, and for that reason, many people cannot understand it. However, literature can help many of us grasp complex ideas, such as epigenetics. If we look at the connection between the Holocaust and epigenetics through the lens of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” the topic of epigenetics become more relatable and easier to understand. Hence, Orwell makes it easier for us to digest the influence of the Nazi Germany military on Holocaust victims and their offspring at the genetic …show more content…
The elephant represents an entire repressed society suffering under imperialism created by “the denial and oppression of differences” between Burma and Great Britain (Heise). This is supported by Edward Quinn’s, a professor of English at the City College of New York, novel Critical Companion to George Orwell: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. In this book, he states that the elephant represents “traditional Burmese culture” and the British under Orwell is trying to destroy this culture through imperialism (Ahmad, and Ahmad). In terms of the Holocaust, the Jewish victims can be represented by the elephant and Orwell by Nazi Germany. The Jews in concentration camps are suffering under the Nazis, just like the elephant, a symbol for the Burmese people, are suffering under Great Britain. The elephant died “very slowly and in great agony” just like Holocaust victims died long painful deaths from starvation, medical experimentation, torture and physical exhaustion (Jabłoński). For those lucky enough to survive, the imperialist practices imposed on the Jews by the Nazi’s effected their genes and contributed to their altered gene