How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
[T]here is a vast category of prisoners, not initially favored by fate, who fight merely with their own strength to survive. One has to fight against the current; to battle every day and every hour against exhaustion, hunger, cold, and the resulting inertia; to resist enemies and have no pity for rivals; to sharpen one's wits, build up one's patience, strengthen one's will-power. Or else, to throttle all dignity and kill all conscience, to climb down into the arena as a beast against other beasts, to let oneself be guided by those unsuspected subterranean forces which sustain families and individuals in cruel times. Many were the ways devised and put into effect by us in order not to die: as many as there are different human characters. All implied a weakening struggle of one against all, and a by no means small sum of aberrations and compromises. Survival without renunciation of any part of one's own moral world—apart from powerful and direct interventions by fortune—was conceded only to very few superior individuals, made of the stuff of martyrs and saints. (9.18)
What is the distinction Levi makes here between the group relying on "patience [...and] willpower" and those that resort to "kill[ing] all conscience"? Can you identify prisoners from each group? What tactics do they use? Also note the metaphors that Primo employs here: the arena and martyrs and saints. What do these suggest? Do they remind you of any other type of historical persecution? What is the difference between this other historical persecution and the one the Jews are now going through? Primo seems to suggest that it's only the exceptional person who can endure the brutality of the camps and retain his moral values.
Quote #8
But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man. (12.24)
Lorenzo, the Italian civilian who risks his own life to bring Primo extra soup and to smuggle a post-card to Primo's family, is one of the most influential people in Primo's life during his time in the Lager. He learns one of his most important survival lessons from Lorenzo: to be compassionate, which Levi throughout the book implies is the central trait of humanity.
Quote #9
Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live. It is raining, but it is not windy. Or else, it is raining and also windy: but you know that this evening it is your turn for the supplement of soup, so that even today you find the strength to reach the evening. Or it is raining, windy and you have the usual hunger, and then you think that if you really had to, if you really felt nothing in your heart but suffering and tedium—as sometimes happens, when you really seem to lie on the bottom,—well, even in that case, at any moment you want you could always go and touch the electric wire-fence, or throw yourself under the shunting trains, and then it would stop raining. (14.4)
No matter how hard things get, the prisoners often find something that makes their current situation bearable. This gives them the hope they need to continue their struggle, although they usually have to undertake some mental gymnastics to get into that headspace. At the end of this chain of reasoning, though, is the darker truth that they can always take their own lives if they just can't take anymore.