Dust Symbol Analysis

Dust pervades the novel. Sarah and her parents spend days imprisoned in the stinking heat of the Vélodrome d’Hiver, where “dry, feathery dust” threatens to choke Sarah. After being transported out of Paris to Beaune-la-Rolande, Sarah and the other Jewish families with her are forced to make “an endless, dusty walk from the little train station, through a small town, where more people had stared and pointed.” On this level, dust comes to represent the oppression of French Jews during World War Two. Dust also takes on a more figurative connotation, through Julia’s story. When she finds herself almost compulsively ruminating on Sarah’s fate, Julia stops to remind herself: “She couldn’t be alive. She had disappeared off the face of the earth, with the rest of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ children. She had never come back from Auschwitz. She was a handful of dust.” In this regard, dust symbolizes the persistence of history: even as she convinces herself that Sarah is long dead, her body reduced to dust, Julia cannot help but care about her and continue to strive to learn her story. This meaning of dust also connects to the way dust symbolizes the oppression of French Jews, as Nazis gassed Jews in concentration camps and then burned their bodies, thus literally reducing them to ash.