Sunday, October 24, 2010

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah's Key is about a Jewish family that is taken by the French police at night. Sarah wants to protect her little brother so she locks him in a bedroom cupboard and tells him she will be back for him. Sarah gets split up from her family and is put into a concentration camp. She meets a girl named Rachel there and one night they decide they are going to escape. On their way out, they got caught but they realized they knew this guard and he knew them to so he decided to let them go. They ran as far as they could and found a house that was in the forest. They slept outside over night and the owners of the house found them in the morning and the girls told the owners everything that had just happened to them. The man and woman knew the girls were not allowed to be there but they let them stay anyways. Rachel got very sick and the owners called a doctor but the police also came because they heard that Rachel ran away and they were also looking for Sarah. They never found Sarah because the owners hid her but the doctor wouldn't help Rachel so she ended up dying. Sarah knew she needed to go back and find her brother so the owners took her back to her old house. There was a new family that lived there now but they let Sarah look in the cupboard and when Sarah opened it she saw the remains of her brother. She was hoping that he would have escaped but he stayed and waited for Sarah to come back for him. Sarah had lost all of her family and friends so all she had left were the people she lived with. When she got older she moved away and never contacted them again. Eventually they learned that Sarah had died in a car accident but they thought she had killed herself because she couldn't deal with the pain and memories anymore.

1. Why do you think the guard had let the girls go? Do you think he felt guilty about how everyone was being treated in the concentration camps?

2. Do you think Sarah stopped talking to the people that raised her because she wanted to forget all those bad memories she had from being with them?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I believe that the guard let them go because he felt terrible for what was happening during that time. And yes, I also believe that she wanted to forget all those bad memories and move on with her life.

Freddy B. 7-8 said...

1. I believe the guard let them go because he felt guilty for all the things he was allowing.
2. I think Sarah stopped talking to those people because she wanted to excape her past. Seeing those people may have reawakened bad memories.

Leah K. 7-8 said...

Yes I agree with both of you. I don't think she wanted to remember anything that happened in her life before so she just shut everyone out that reminded her of the past.

Lindsay S. 7-8 said...

I believe the guard let the girls go because he felt bad for them and he knew them. And I think Sarah didn't contact the family that took her in because she wanted to forget her horrible past.

Rafiq O. 1-2 said...

1.) I think he probably felt bad for what they were going through and just wanted to help. It might not have been the wisest decision because he's most likely putting his safety at risk, but it was definitely a heart-felt gesture.

2.) I think so.

Ashley B. 1-2 said...

I think the guard understood that what the Nazis were doing to the Jewish and other outcasts in society was wrong. I agree with Rafiq about him feeling terrible about what was happening and this gesture was the best he could do to help them.