50 pages • 1 hour read
The Truce
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Themes
The Experience of Uncertainty
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s depiction of the Holocaust and trauma, and it also contains brief references to abuse and domestic violence.
The Truce is set during the final days of World War II and the months beyond. During this time, uncertainty about everything reigns. For people like Primo Levi— people who have been confined to the extermination camps and left to die by the Nazis—the nature of their predicament is inherently unclear. The survivors have their lives changed, once again, without their knowledge or consent. The future is different, but still uncertain.
This sense of uncertainty pervades across Europe. The Russian soldiers and the Polish locals who arrive at the camp provide some information about what is happening: The Nazis are on the cusp of losing the war and the people of Auschwitz will be freed. Amid the jubilation in the weeks that follow, however, the survivors find themselves plunged into a broader zone of perpetual uncertainty. Tens of millions of people are dead, entire countries have been defeated, and no one is able to say with clarity what happens next. For Levi and his fellow Italians, this is particularly pronounced. Italy was an Axis power at the beginning of the war, only for the state to collapse into near-civil war (See: Background). Released from Auschwitz, the Italians are uncertain about their immediate future. They do not know what train they will board, or where they will be taken. More pressingly, however, they cannot even be certain of what kind of Italy they will return to.
Amid the uncertainty of the immediate situation, the brutality of the war imbues Levi with uncertainty about the future. Among the many psychological and psychical punishments inflicted on him by his experiences in Auschwitz, the Nazis have robbed him of hope. He has seen the darkest elements of humanity up close and, but for several strokes of good luck, he could have died. He has seen people cremated in giant, industrialized ovens. Having borne witness to this, Levi’s narration is filled with an immediacy that avoids a terrifying question. The future is uncertain, he feels, because he has seen the deplorable depths of humanity. Levi wants to return home, though the uncertainty of the future has robbed him of his optimism.
The end of the war is not simply a happy ending; instead, the end of the war is a starting point in the construction of an uncertain future. In a world consumed by chaos and uncertainty, Levi’s narrative uses humanity’s darkest moment as a narrative start point in the building of a better—or at least different—future.
The Challenges of Language
The Truce is set in Central and Eastern Europe, an inflection point between many languages. Primo Levi is an Italian man who speaks German, French, and a smattering of other languages. As he passes through Poland, Russia, and other countries, however, language becomes a key theme for his experiences. He speaks neither Polish nor Russian but, after his horrific experiences in Auschwitz, feels a need to communicate with those around him.
Often, when meeting someone new, Levi will work through his most favored languages, then into the snippets and phrases he has picked up from fellow travelers. In this way, language is not just some abstract ideal. In Levi’s situation, language is a survival tool. In Poland and Russia, however, this linguistic struggle becomes even more pronounced. The struggle of the Italians to communicate with the Russians and Poles emphasizes the difference that they feel from the soldiers and the local people. As survivors of the camp, there is no common tongue that can fully and completely communicate the horrors that they have seen. The struggle to cross linguistic boundaries suggests that there is no language for the Holocaust—words in any language cannot adequately communicate the experiences of the survivors.
In spite of these traumatic experiences, Levi never stops trying to communicate. Even when there is no mutually-intelligible language, Levi strives to make himself understood to other people. He is not alone in this desire. Even someone like Cesare, a petty but charming trickster, wants to communicate with the world around him. This is often achieved by gestures and facial expressions. People point to what they want and haggle over the price, even when they cannot understand one another’s languages. Often, people like Cesare are not achieving anything particularly important or consequential in their efforts. They are striving to feel something human. Even ineffective conversation is the kind of mundane, human experience that was denied to them in the camps. Cesare and his ilk do not become frustrated with their lack of language because even the opportunity to communicate badly is relished in a world in which their language was once forbidden.
Traveling through the north of Italy, Levi’s return home is accompanied by a shrinking of his linguistic nostalgic. As he sits at home with his family, speaking his own language at last, he realizes that he has no words, no linguistic framework that can effectively tell people what he has experienced. In this way, the memoir becomes his testament to the inadequacy of language.
The Impacts of Trauma
Everything that happens in The Truce occurs in the long shadow of trauma. People like Levi who experienced the pain, suffering, and death of the extermination camps have been utterly traumatized. In The Truce, Levi does not dwell on the past. Instead, this trauma manifests in many ways in his present.
In Auschwitz, Levi and the other prisoners were starved and, even many months after they have left the camp, this deliberate malnourishment leaves a psychological as well as a physical scar. Levi explains how he and many others simply cannot refuse food. When there is any food available, they eat quickly and greedily. With their immediate future uncertain, they feel compelled to eat everything they can— from nettles to horses—as they can never again be sure of their next meal. Furthermore, many of Levi’s stories describe terrible betrayals. The kapos, for example, betrayed their people in the camps for better treatment. When Levi meets people who made similar moral decisions, he and other survivors are less willing to cast moral judgments. Their traumatic experiences have taught them that everyone is doing what they deem necessary to survive.
Another way that trauma manifests in the post-camp experiences of the survivors is through their relationship with Soviet soldiers. After being liberated from Auschwitz, Levi and his fellow survivors are sent from place to place with no apparent cohesive plan as to how they will be repatriated. This complicated journey takes place under the constant supervision of the Soviet soldiers. This dynamic aesthetically resembles the situation at the camp. Levi is not alone in being constantly reminded of life in the camps when Soviet soldiers, dressed in military uniforms and armed with weapons, issue orders. Such situations recall trauma from the past, so that Levi is constantly surprised when the Soviet guards are largely indifferent to those under their authority. The Nazi guards sought to exterminate those in the camps, whom they considered less than human. The Soviet guards simply want to get home.
During the repatriation, Levi sees wounded German soldiers and civilians. After his traumatic experiences, he feels a compulsion to confront these people. German soldiers ran Auschwitz, he remembers, so he wonders whether the people he meets knew what was happening in the camps. Rather than feeling a need to say something to them, he feels that they have a requirement to say something to him. Instead of apologies or shame, however, he encounters only broken, dispirited people. Physically and mentally, the Germans in the latter half of the text are like ghosts. Their spectral existence cannot alleviate Levi’s trauma; they are not in a position to provide him with any closure or catharsis. There is no one, Levi suggests, who can fully mend the effects of the trauma inflicted on the survivors of the camps.
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