Kaddish for a Child Not Born Essay | Critical Essay #1

Kaddish for a Child Not Born Critical Essay #1

Ullmann is a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, Ullmann explores the theme of survival in Kertész's novel.

Imre Kertész's Kaddish for a Child Not Born is a novel about survival after the Holocaust, written by a man who lived through Auschwitz, the worst of the Nazi death camps during World War II. In the novel, the narrator refuses to have children after the war ends, which ruins his short-lived marriage. In contemplating his past, the narrator realizes that he cannot bring a child into a world that could produce an Auschwitz, to do to a child what was done to him.

The survival of children is fundamental to the survival of the species; after all, the human race would not survive if individuals did not reproduce. On a smaller scale, those who live through devastation can be called survivors even if they are too scarred,...
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