Post Script to Synthesis Essay (Late)

After reading the comments on my synthesis essay, I realized that I was on the path to writing a research paper about the Holocaust, not my primary source. When I wrote my outline, I had a reinvigorated approach to the RAE paper, one where I focused on explicating my primary source through secondary sources. Previously, I had been using my cultural text as a platform upon which to pile facts; I saw it as the literary manifestation of my secondary sources. Now, I am viewing the assignment with an inverse outlook: my secondary sources are the factual manifestation of my primary source.
Specifically, I have focused more on the story itself in addition to the allegories and symbols within it. I feel that the innocently observational tone of the story is significant to its overall meaning. I had not even explored this idea in my Rhetorical analysis essay, but after much research it is relevant. As an account of Holocaust commemoration in Israel, "Shoes" presents the perspective of an Israeli youth who is somewhat removed from the Holocaust. His discoveries are analogous to the development of many Israeli pre-adolescents as they enter adult society. As the story progresses, the boy assumes a more intimate connection with his family's past and gains a greater awareness of the relationship between his heritage and the Holocaust. As the study of Israeli students' attitudes toward the Holocaust shows, Israeli teens share the same opinions as the narrator. The tone of the boys narration indicates that he is seeking reconciliation between the Holocaust and modern Israeli society. As a vibrant, socially-conscious society, Israel has reached a certain stasis in her commemoration of Holocaust victims, a state that the boys reaches at the end of the story.