A Room on the Roof

Savyon Liebrecht was a child of survivors from the Holocaust and like many other children who went through the same experience; she had to deal with the trauma of the past. This admired contemporary writer has grown up, and through her writings, it is evident that she is still trying to understand and live with the “silence” which her blood relations bestowed upon her. A Room on the Roof displays the innate tension when prejudice, misunderstanding and fear that arises when not knowing, and questioning what is known to ones self. It seems that individuals adopt thinking, values and beliefs of those around them, which is primarily learned from families. With this, our judgments are clouded by the values we were raised with and that in turn, affect our worldviews.

A great influence to how the Arabs are to be perceived is the woman’s husband. She appears to be under the husbands’ wing; seizing the values and believes of his and making them her own. Constantly being around people from her own culture, and anything that isn’t familiar is to automatically be feared and denied. “The fear born of having people trespass…” The sister of the woman’s also plays a part in the influence she has succumbed to. Her sisters’ prejudice and a disgust towards people who are different from her just adds logs to a burning fire; showing no respect and helping the woman become accustom to treating people who are different horribly. “You made a mistake about the coffee. Let them make it themselves, and don’t serve them anything anymore. If they enter the house-you’ll never get rid of them”.

As the woman became acquainted with the Arabs, her perception changed towards them. She began to look at them not as single, common people, but as strong individuals who are unique and brilliantly diverse in their own way. Shunning the generalization