by Shilo Dawn Goodson

Created on: November 16, 2011   Last Updated: November 20, 2011

In “After Auschwitz” by Anne Sexton, she explores the pain and tragedy involved with the Holocaust while generalizing the destruction caused by the Nazis in World War II to the actions of mankind in general. In the opening stanza, Sexton says, “Each day,/ each Nazi/ took, at 8:00 A., a baby/ and sauteed him for breakfast/ in his frying pan.” The image created by these words is vivid and disturbing. Through this, Sexton is talking of all the children who were murdered by the Nazis. She is saying that it was casually done; the children were treated like they were just another animal ready to be slaughtered for breakfast, much like a pig might be slaughtered and then eaten as bacon the next morning.

The next stanza, “And death looks on with a casual eye/ and picks at the dirt under his fingernail” was a shot at all the people who knew what was going on and did nothing. She is saying that if they know something horrible is going on and they just stand by and allow it to happen, they are also in the wrong. By using death as the one with the casual eye, she is saying that if they do nothing, they might as well be the reason for the bad things happening to others.

In the next stanza, Sexton begins to generalize the events of Auschwitz to mankind in general when she says, “Man is evil” and “Man is a flower/ that should be burnt.” Since many of those killed in Auschwitz and other extermination camps suffered death in the gas chambers and had their bodies cremated, Sexton may have carefully chosen the reference to man deserving to be burnt. Much like the early Christian doctrine of “eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth,” Sexton is suggesting that those who harm others should suffer the same fate.

Sexton follows the lines about man being burnt with the stanza “And death looks on with a casual eye/and scratches his anus.” Again, she is suggesting that if people just stand by and let harm to come to others, they are as much to blame as those causing the harm. They are in reality the death of those who are unable to defend themselves.

The final stanza of “After Auschwitz” includes the lines “Man with his small pink toes,/ with his miraculous fingers/ is not a temple/ but an outhouse.” Sexton is saying that they are not something pure and beautiful. Because they do not care for those around us and protect the innocent, they have instead become something disgusting, something smelly, something associated with human waste. They want to believe that they are something great and wonderful, but our actions have made us something impure.

In the final lines of her poem, Sexton begs us to not allow something like Auschwitz to happen again. She says, “Let man never again raise his eyes,/ on a soft July night./ Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.” She wants us to remember the horrible things that happened to children as well as others during the Holocaust and use those memories as a reminder of how important it is to not let our hatred and prejudices get so extreme that another such tragedy becomes possible. 

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