How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The door opened with a crash, and the dark echoed with outlandish orders in that curt, barbaric barking of Germans in command which seems to give vent to millennial anger. (1.27)
How do we get a sense of Primo's attitude toward the Germans through his images of their language as "outlandish," "barbaric" and "barking"?
Quote #2
I understand that they are ordering me to be quiet, but the word is new to me, and since I do not know its meaning and implications, my inquietude increases. The confusion of languages is a fundamental component of the manner of living here: one is surrounded by a perpetual Babel, in which everyone shouts orders and threats in languages never heard before, and woe betide whoever fails to grasp the meaning. No one has time here, no one has patience, no one listens to you; we latest arrivals instinctively collect in the corners, against the walls, afraid of being beaten. (3.4)
Babel comes from the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible, where God creates a confusion of languages that prevents the people from working together to build their tower up to heaven. Why is this an appropriate image here? What might a confusion of languages accomplish within the camp?
Quote #3
[T]he train would stop and I would feel the warm air and the smell of hay and I would get out into the sun; then I would lie down on the ground to kiss the earth, as you read in books, with my face in the grass. And a woman would pass, and she would ask me "Who are you?" in Italian, and I would tell her my story in Italian, and she would understand, and she would give me food and shelter. And she would not believe the things I tell her, and I would show her the number on my arm, and then she would believe... (4.9)
Notice how Primo focuses on how he would speak to this dream woman in Italian? He repeats it no less than twice in a very short space, so we get a huge hint that this is important to him. His focus on this is a sign that he misses hearing his own language among the multitude of those unfamiliar ones spoken in camp. There's also the matter of telling one's story and being heard and believed. Speaking his native language gives him the ability to be heard and understood, both literally and metaphorically.
Quote #4
So, "der Italeyner" does not believe in selections. Schmulek wants to speak German but speaks Yiddish; I understand him with difficulty, only because he wants to be understood. He silences Walter with a sign, he will see about persuading me. (4.57)
This is a perfect example of how difficult it is to communicate with other prisoners in the Lager—even when it comes to supremely serious and important subjects like the selections.
Quote #5
The Carbide Tower, which rises in the middle of Buna and whose top is rarely visible in the fog, was built by us. Its bricks were called Ziegel, briques, tegula, cegli, kamenny, mattoni, téglak, and they were cemented by hate; hate and discord, like the Tower of Babel, and it is this that we call it:—Babelturm, Bobelturm; and in it we hate the insane dream of grandeur of our masters, their contempt for God and men, for us men.
And today as in the old fable, we all feel, and the Germans themselves feel, that a curse not transcendent and divine, but inherent and historical—hangs over the insolent buildings based on the confusion of languages and erected in defiance of heaven like a stone oath. (7.10-11)
Again, Primo turns to the Tower of Babel metaphor. Just look at all the words Primo hears for "bricks," in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, and others. The Carbide Tower itself becomes something like language, serving as a "stone oath," a shout out to heaven that the Nazis will do what they want.
Quote #6
Throughout the spring, convoys arrived from Hungary; one prisoner in two was Hungarian, and Hungarian had become the second language in the camp after Yiddish. (12.1)
Keep in mind that Primo doesn't speak Yiddish or Hungarian, or many of the other languages spoken in camp. Now that these two languages are the most dominant, Primo is separated from most of his fellow prisoners.
Quote #7
They hear us speak in many different languages, which they do not understand and which sound to them as grotesque as animal noises. (12.20)
To the Nazis, the babble of different languages sounds like "animal noises," which probably fits right in with their preconceptions that the Jews aren't even human and deserve the treatment they're getting.
Quote #8
Just as our hunger is not that feeling of missing a meal, so our way of being cold has need of a new word. We say "hunger," we say "tiredness," "fear," "pain," we say "winter" and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and suffering in their homes. If the Lagers had lasted longer a new, harsh language would have been born; and only this language could express what it means to toil the whole day in the wind, with the temperature below freezing, wearing only a shirt, underpants, cloth jacket and trousers, and in one's body nothing but weakness, hunger and knowledge of the end drawing nearer. (13.3)
What does Levi mean by "free words"? What do you think this new "harsh language" of the Lager might sound like?
Quote #9
Do you know how one says "never" in camp slang? "Morgen früh," tomorrow morning. (14.12)
Here's an example of the unique language, or slang, that the prisoners develop in the camp. The word "tomorrow" usually gives hope (just think of the musical stylings of one particular little red-haired girl). Here, though, it's just more of the same, and doesn't bring any comfort to anyone.