John Hersey's "The Wall"　―The Position of Diaristic Literature―

This is a resistence literature about the Jews living in the ghetto in Warsaw. How they were brutally treated and finally led into resistance by Germans in the Second World War is minutely described in this book. The story is told in diaristic way, which, we find, more effective and natural than in any other methods. John Hersey wrote "The Wall" based on the diaries left by Noach Levinson, a resident Jew in theghetto who seems to have been a record-maniac. He wrote, "the slightest kind of personal, diaristic notes for some polite Jewish history 1 intended in a quiet year to write." This "slightest kind" is not so slightly entered in his diary but only after having been most carefully investigated personally and told in detail by others. So, one incident has some entrances. And when he put "them down, he naturally put the incident less importance, than people's reactions to them". This gave his writing a cubic beauty. Hersey used the same method. Levinson survived one year after escape, and his archives were dug out after his death. He began writing his diaries in 1935 through 1943. During the three and a half years, he wrote more than four million words- "which the editor has been obliged to reduce to onetwentieth their original scope." Hersey's efforts for two years in "editing" and the cubic beauty produced by telling stories from various angles have given a new phase to the diaristic literature. I have here tried to find out the definite position of the diaristic literature in the present-day literature through this study of "The Wall"