Discuss the details of the meadow and its inclusion in "The Shawl" by Cynthia Ozick.

 “The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick imparts insight into the
lives of three Polish Jews who try to survive in a concentration camp during World War
II. The story is told in third person point-of-view through the character of Rosa, the
mother of Magda, a baby.  Rosa’s struggles to keep her child alive in the hostile
environment of the camp required phenomenal efforts.

After
some time in the camps, Rosa, Stella, her fourteen year old niece, and Magda, now
fifteen months old,  are hanging on for their lives.  Rosa gives most of her food to
Magda, yet she is barely alive.  Her eyes are widened and her belly is  swollen, typical
of starvation and dehydration. 

Everywhere Magda goes, the
“magical” shawl accompanies her.  It has given her great satisfaction and appears to
have even fed her as she sucked on it as though it were her mother’s breast.  Magda does
not speak. Somehow, with the use of the shawl, Rosa has kept Magda hidden from the
Nazis. 

Stella has always been jealous of Magda.  Her
desire for the shawl has grown, so she takes it away from the baby.  When Rosa is not
paying attention, Magda wanders out into the grounds and begins to scream.  Rosa despite
her shock hurries to find the shawl to lure the baby back into the
barracks.

When she returns to the door, Magda has been
scooped up by “a black body like a domino and a pair of black boots.” Walking a little
way down the fence, the Nazi soldier throws the baby into the electrified fence which
instantly kills the baby. 

Rosa’s observation of the death
of her child comes as she steps from the barracks to find Magda.  Her view includes the
other side of the deadly fence.  To Rosa, a pastoral garden
appears.

On
the other side of the steel fence, there were green meadows speckled with dandelions and
deep-colored violets; beyond them, even farther, innocent tiger
lilies.

The conflicted worlds
of the ugliness in the concentration camps [described by the author as raining excrement
and filled with greasy smoke emanating from the crematoriums] with the beauty on the
other side of the fence symbolically fills the reader with empathy. Rosa’s vision
simultaneously incorporates both the view of the murder of her child and this luscious
meadow.

Faced with the choice to run to her child, stay
quiet and return to the barracks, or scream at the top of lungs—to save herself with her
baby already dead, Rosa stuffs the shawl in her mouth and begins to suck on it.  In
another time, the baby and Rosa might have played in a similar place. Now, the baby is
dead.

The meadow fills Rosa with grief, guilt and
loneliness; however, she will find a way to the other side.  Rosa will live in the
symbolic garden again and in Magda’s honor.