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Joseph Telushkin
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Forgiveness and Compassion
Religion and Moral Truth
Remembrance
Anti-Semitism and Dehumanization
Silence, Guilt, and Resistance
Summary
Analysis
Todorov reiterates the argument that the only person who can forgive is the one who experienced the injury, and therefore murder is unforgivable. Because Todorov was not raised as a Christian, he considered justice and morality to be far more important than absolution.
Todorov, along with Améry, are the only two respondents who announce themselves as atheists, and their responses focus much less on the question of forgiveness than the question of justice, arguing that Karl needs to be brought to justice.
Themes
Todorov questions whether Karl’s repentance should be taken into account, because a majority of Nazi criminals felt no regret for their actions. He believes that Karl might deserve different treatment: not absolution, but recognition that he is attempting to change. This is followed by the question of what we can do with evil that is now in the past, and how we can put it to use in the moral education of people.
The Sunflower itself might be one answer to Todorov’s question. Simon uses his encounter with Karl constructively by writing a book that investigates morality, philosophy, and religion, and which remembers the victims of the crimes while still treating the perpetrators with some compassion.
Themes
Todorov concludes that society needs to stop identifying evil with the Other and good with oneself, and begin recognizing that we are all capable of evil so as to be better prepared to reject it in the present.
Like Telushkin in the previous essay, Todorov believes that people should be more compassionate so that they do not have to ask for forgiveness at all.
Themes
