Sarah's Key: Social Action Critical Thinking Questions

     In the book Sarah's Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay, the main character and protagonist Julia Jarmond is going through a sort of mid-life crisis.  She lives in Paris and has for the past twenty-five years, yet her French husband's family still won't except her, partially because she is American.  Her French husband, Bertrand, has been cheating on her for a while, and really is not treating her that well overall.  When she becomes pregnant with the child they had been hoping for for many years, he says he does not want it, and ends up divorcing her because she refuses to have an abortion.  After the divorce, she goes home to America, which she had been missing for some time now, and lives in New York City with her oldest child Zoë, and the recently born Sarah.  Although all this seems sad, she ends up happier after the whole thing, her husband was bad anyway, and she has another child.      

     The cause for all this in Julia's life, starts out with an assignment she gets from her job as a reporter in Paris.  That year is the sixtieth anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in Paris.  That was when many, many thousands of Jews in Paris were arrested, and eventually exterminated in concentration camps, during the Holocaust.  It's code name was "Operation Spring Breeze," and the purpose was to reduce the Jewish population in France.  Julia starts to research the topic and becomes incredibly engrossed in it.  She ends up finding out about a young Jewish girl named Sarah who lived in the apartment her husband's family had lived in, and that she was about to move into with her husband.  It turns out that Sarah had actually lived there with her family, until they had been taken in the roundup.  That was when Bertrand's family was able to move in.  When they moved in, something terrible happened that only Bertrand's father and grandfather, and grandmother knew about.  It was always regarded as a huge family secret, so it was pretty serious when Julia started investigating.  Most of Bertrand's family was very unhappy about it, but in the end, when they all found out about the horrible thing that had happened, I think it helped them.  Throughout the book, both Julia and Sarah's story is being told, and their lives become kind of intertwined.  

      Regarding the first social action critical thinking question, the Holocaust is of course a very hard thing that is happening while you are in the part of the book that Sarah is narrating.  I think that being unable to accept others' differences and racism are both underlying parts and causes of the Holocaust.  During Julia's part of the book, which is most of it, I think her her just growing apart from her husband is important and hard.  I also think that she is growing apart from him, because she never really loved everything about him.  He is very charming, determined, exciting, sometimes fun, and hansom, but also of ignorant, annoying, and just plain mean quite often.  His family has also never accepted her or even come close, and he has not tried to stick up for her once.  He also practically makes fun of her for being an American.  She finds that when she once liked his teasing her, it's getting pretty old now.  Bertrand is also changing.  He has lost most of his good qualities, and actually is not really what he seems.  

     For the second question, you see from the point of view of French people who want to cover up the whole roundup, and mostly from people who have accepted it because they know that it would be wrong for it to be forgotten.  Julia and Sarah both have the later mentioned perspective, but I think Sarahs point of view as someone who is going through the concentration camps is especially interesting.  It shows you how betrayed and scared the people must have felt when the same French police who were supposed to protect them, were now escorting them into the camps.  For example, in a camp, Sarah sees a policeman who only about a month or less ago, was helping her cross the street on her way to school everyday, is now working in a camp.  I also noticed that the author never shows the perspective of someone who is pro-Holocaust.  Even the people who try to cover up the roundup up and say that it is all in the past are not pro-Nazi. 

     In conclusion, there are some very hard things going on, and some interesting points of view in Sarah's Key, and I think that for both Julia and Sarah, it is a loss of innocence story.  Julia realizes that she is not too happy with her life, and her husband was never really as good as he seemed.  She always deserved better in my opinion.  For Sarah, her whole family and everyone she knows is killed, after being arrested by the police of their own country.  This all happens within a very short period of time at a young age.  Obviously, this makes her grow up way too fast, realize how terrible the world can be, and it kind of ruins the rest of her life.