The Czech Dog And Ice Cold Essay, Research Paper

The short stories “Ice Cold” and “The Czech Dog” present two characters, Babka and the Czech man, who share similarities and differences. In “Ice Cold,” Babka loses her innocence at fifteen years old and she is emotionally scarred forever. At present, she is an immigrant in Canada who does not communicate to her family. However, in “The Czech Dog”, the main character is dehumanized and loses all his dignity. The Czech man becomes an isolated figure who is very withdrawn from others around him. These two characters are similar in the way they decide to express their past experiences, the substantial damage of the experiences, and how they deal with love after such experiences, yet there is enough differences in these aforementioned areas that render them unique. Both characters of the two stories had equal chances to share their past with others. Babka has had many oppurtunities to tell her son or any of her loved ones off the events that took place when she was a young girl. The Czech man got his chance to reveal the story of his life to the Red Cross woman when she invited him to her home. The man, hesitant, eventually spoke of the mental and physical battle that he went through in Czechoslovakia. He told the woman this because he felt that Americans did not live real life brutal experiences and since he felt they see freedom as a “careless dress”, ( W. G. Hardy, pg. 172 ). Babka choses never to speak of what happened in her life long ago. Instead she in her room all day watching childrens television shows. She refuses to speak to her family or any other person in the country, she is still in touch with her friends in Poland. This is bacause Babka feels no connection with her son or her grandchildren. She also has little knowledge of the English language. The man now helps his country by working for the Underground. Babka does nothing to aid her native land. The Czech man and Babka both had contact with brutality during the Second World War. The man had a life in Czechoslovakia as a respected physician, he also had a wife. During the war, German soldiers ambushed his country, did awful things to his wife (possibly a rape), and hurt him physically by kicking and beating him several times. Babka, as a young teenager in Poland witnessed her Jewish friends being forced to walk into water under ice cold temperatures. They were also ceased by German soldiers. The man from Czechoslovakia had damages done onto him that were more severe than Babka’s because he experinced it first hand while Babka saw her friends go through it. Babka still has a family but the man lost his family long ago. Even after a loss of hope, the two characters find love once again. Babka, after her Holocaust experience, finds a sense of warmth through a television commercial. The commercial shows a mother reaching down to her child wraping her in a hug. The Czech man, during the war, finds a dog and shows love toward it. He feeds the dog as much he can, and takes it with him on his journey. It is when the dog licks his hand that he realizes how alone he is. The commercial Babka enjoys is symbolic since she needs someone that will show this compassion to her. The man ends up killing this dog to save his own life. This is symbolic because the dog is Czech, it is from his own country. This is also ironic since the animal shows humanity and the human acts violently. The main characters of both short stories are withdrawn, lonely, and isolated from the outside world. They were normal people who, because of their experiences during the war, had their lives altered and never the same again. They differ in their similarities by the way they talk about their past, the severity of the damage caused, and in the way they deal with the love they witness. The Czech man and Babka carry a great burden that most Americans or Canadians would never come across.