Preview

Schindler's List Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1328 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Schindler's List Essay
Schindler’s list

“Schindler’s List” is a film directed by Steven Spielberg which is based on the novel “Schindler’s Ark” by Thomas Kennedy. It is set during the Second World War when Hitler was in charge. Jews, gypsies and black people were seen as untermenschen (sub-human) and were sent to concentration camps to be killed. “Schindler’s List” is a didactic film about Oskar Schindler who employed Jewish people so that he could make money, as they would do the job for little pay, but later in the film he has an epiphany, which changes everything, including the viewers opinion of him. They see him as more admirable towards the end of the film. Schindler’s metamorphosis from a cold man to one of compassion takes place over a few scenes. Steven Spielberg uses music, lighting, colour, and camera angles to show the change in Oskar Schindler throughout the movie.

Oskar
…show more content…
A hand held camera and the jerky movement places the audience in the grave with Schindler and the dead bodies. We hear non-diagetic, operatic music in the background; this creates tension and builds suspense. We see a close up of one of the Nazi soldier’s face, which shows insanity which adds to the chaos. There is a long shot of Schindler and behind him, we can see the scale of it all. The camera also pans around the landscape emphasising the number of dead Jews. This is hell complete with fire. We then see the girl in the red coat but this time, she is dead. The close up of Schindler’s face when he sees her again contrasts his face when he first saw her. The extreme close up of Oskar Schindler’s face shows shock, horror and disgust as we see the little girl again. This is when Schindler’s epiphany is complete. All material things no longer matter to him as the little girl symbolises life and how important it is. He now realises that his exploitation of the Jewish people was wrong and now wants to try and help these human

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Schindlers Lit and Night

    • 935 Words
    • 4 Pages

    I believe in “Schindler’s List” are treated differently because, in the middle of the story Schindler has a change of heart towards the Jews. He begins to attempt to keep families together and unharmed, fed, clothed, etc.…

    • 935 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Schindler’s List” had the greater effect on my personally. I was watching the movie of “Schindler’s List.” Jewish people were hidden in their in homes and stores. When Nazi’s soldiers come in Jewish’s houses and stores and found someone is inside or is hiding something, the soldiers would kill them. Also, the soldiers could machine gun through the wall and anything in their way. Jewish couldn’t hide anything because Nazis would find what they had hidden. Jewish feel afraid and go back the camps.…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Schindler's List Critique

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages

    When he bids his Schindlerjuden good-bye, they give him a ring made of gold tooth of a factory worker, engraved with the Talmudic phrase, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” Schindler breaks down, crying that he could have been sacrificed more, saved more lives. He and his wife then flee. The next morning, a Russian soldier enters the camp and tells the Jews they are free. As they walk toward a nearby town, the scene dissolves into full color and reveals a group of real Holocaust survivors walking across a field. They line up, many accompanied by the actors who play them, and place a rock on Schindler’s grave. The last person at the grave is Liam Neeson (Oskar Schindler). He places a rose on the…

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Holocaust was one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever known. There were many key people who participated in this outrageous genocide however some get more attention then others. Adolf Eichmann is a classic example. Eichmann was a self-proclaimed "Jewish Specialist" and head of the Gestapo Department. Eichmann was responsible for keeping every train rolling right into the stations of the concentration and death camps during the holocaust. Now we will take a look into Eichmann's childhood, life experiences, and his later actions to see what shaped into a man of hatred towards the Jewish race.…

    • 1661 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    acceptance of the Jews. In this way, Schindler maintains a balance between both conceptions of belonging…

    • 1045 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    This film takes place during the time of WW2. It shows how some families didn’t even know what their husbands were doing in the war. It also shows what goes on in their homes and how the soldiers treated the Jews. Also near the end it depicts the inside of the camp. It shows that the Jews really didn’t know what was going to happen to them when they went to go get gassed.…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    According to Gregory H. Stanton, President of Genocide Watch there is 8 stages of Genocide and in his opinion Genocide is a progress that is developing in the eight stages and which is predictable and not inexorable. At each stage there are possibilities to stop or at least influence Genocide and Oskar Schindler’s deeds are one example of moral courage and active resistance to the worst Genocide in the history of humankind during the Second World War. The following text will deal with evidences of Stanton’s eight stages of Genocide in Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” and Schindler’s attempts to stop Genocide in the different stages.…

    • 1787 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Shoe-Horn Sonata

    • 1047 Words
    • 3 Pages

    John Misto’s play “The Shoe-Horn Sonata” is a text that was written to acknowledge and honour the women who were once forgotten prisoners of war in World War 2. The play uses distinctively visual images and dialogue to create visual images of dehumanisation and the small idea of hope during this time. “Schindlers list” directed by Steven Spielberg also used the movie to acknowledge the names of the Jewish that had been forgotten. A range of techniques are used in both texts to help understand the visual aspect of the texts such as the plight of the protagonists in each text.…

    • 1047 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Schindler then established his one enamel works in Zolbience. The factory became the haven for around nine hundred Jewish workers. He provided them with relief from the horrible Plaszow labor camp that was located near the factory. He succeeded in transferring to Brünnlitz approximately eight hundred Jewish men from the Gross-Rosen camp and three hundred Jewish women from Auschwitz, ensuring their humane treatment and, ultimately, saving their lives (USHMM). Oskar Schindler was a German man who was willing to risk his life to save the life of a Jew or anyone else that wasn’t his nationality and people were against. I have read many books that were either about or had something to do with Schindler, everytime that I have heard a story about him and how he saved the lives of over a thousand people, a rush of emotions and pleasantness rushes over me. After many years of saving and hiring Jews, on May 8, 1945, the war came to an end for Germany and Schindler left his factory before the troops were going to come in and rescue the Jews. The Jews wrote Schindler a note saying the he had helped the Jews and that he improvised many good deeds, just in case he got captured and the enemy troops…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    shindlers list essy

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages

    One of the ways in which Spielberg effectively reveals the situation is by showing Shindler and Goeth as opposites. When we first see them they are both shaving. Spielberg uses this scene to show how Shindler and Goeths characters are different. The scene cuts to Schindler shaving his face. It then cuts to a parallel shot of Goeth shaving. The shot continues to go back and forth between the two men. Spielberg does this to demonstrate their different state of minds. You can see this because when Shindler is shaving he hums but when Goeth is shaving he is silent, we also see this by the way they shave, when Shindler shaves he does it rough as if nothing’s wrong but Goeth does it gently because he knows what’s up. The camera is used to show the comparison between both men which suggest they are getting ready for something (Goeth to kill all the Jews and for Shindler to start saving the Jews) this shows that Shindler is oblivious of what is going to happen; he believes that it is just another day. However Goeths distress while shaving shows that he knows today is not any other day, today is a horrifying day which will become known history.…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Concentration camps showed us inhumanity on a scale previously unimagined. However the setting in place of such inhumane behaviour began some years before with the systematic dehumanising of the Jews by breaking down social structures and relationships and taking away their place in civil society. The novel shows that there is great inhumanity displayed from this personal journey of Elie Wiesel. The Jews were tortured every day for no reason at all other than for the SS officers’ own amusement. The SS officers treated the men as if they were animals, making them fight for food. Women, babies, old, sick, and handicapped were put into the crematoriums as soon as they arrived at the camps. The Germans stripped the Jews to nothing and took away everything close to them, separation from loved ones, isolation, transportation and the ruthless, cold actions towards them in the camps such as starvation and selections of the fittest. They killed people for no reason, with no remorse whatsoever. Tortures, being treated like animals, and being burned alive or killed were all things that led to the Jews feeling as if they were not human.…

    • 674 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Light can still be found even in the darkest of times; Oskar Schindler shows this through his actions during the Holocaust. In the novel Oskar Schindler’s portrayed his motives and ways one man can help thousands of the struggling Polish Jews. What he did absolutely contradict what his country and leader wanted; they were planning to eradicate all Jews from the face of the Earth. By using his factory as a place for the helpless Jews to work, he avoided thousands from being sent to the concentration camps where they would work as slaves and eventually die. At first Schindler liked the idea of Polish workers but after he found out what Hitler’s true intentions were he quickly felt remorse for them and determined himself to save as many as humanly possible. He began employing more and more Jews, he saved thousands of lives but ruined his business in…

    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Oskar Schindler Quotes

    • 1463 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Oskar Schindler stated, “I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more” (AZ Quotes 1). During World War II, Oskar Schindler stood up to the Nazi party in Krakow, Poland by using false labor records and pleading with Nazi leaders, so they would not send his Jewish factory workers to concentration camps. Oskar Schindler’s bravery to stand up to the Nazi’s during World War II saved 1,200 innocent Jewish people’s lives from the horrors of the Holocaust.…

    • 1463 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Holocaust essay

    • 509 Words
    • 3 Pages

    As tragic as it may be, Innocence was lost throughout the Holocaust. The Holocaust was Adolf Hitler’s, the Nazi party’s leader, idea for creating his idea of a perfect race. Lasting around six and a half years, anybody that did not belong in his German community or race was murdered or put to work in concentration camps. Millions of people from different races were killed throughout the Holocaust. Throughout the massacre, not only were lives lost, but innocence as well Swing kids, a movie directed by Tomas Carter, is based upon a group of teenage bous, trying to find who they are under the Nazi influences. Night, a book written by Eli Weisel, focused on a Jewish boy named Eliezer and his journey throughout the Holocaust. Schindler’s List, a Steven Spielberg movie, concerns a man named Oskar Schindler, a Nazi follower, and the struggles he faces with the decisions he makes towards his Jewish workers.…

    • 509 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Schindler's List

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The movie Schindler’s List is based of the book Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally. The main character is Oskar Schindler a member of the Nazi Party. The movie was directed by Steven Spielberg featured Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler. In 1939, Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who moved to Krakow with the hopes of opening a factory. With some help from Itzhak Stern, he manages to find a way. Schindler manages to charm high ranking political soldiers called Schutzsaffel, or SS of the Nazi Party in order to protect his business.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays