For my essay, I plan on writing on Whitaker Chambers, Witness. In his memoir, he discusses the huge case of Alger Hiss, in which he played a vital role. I want to debate that because this case was so popular, and how he wrote his memoir in a more self-focused style, he didn’t create the most effective piece for resisting totalitarianism. He focused too much on his own personal struggle with Communism and his own relationship with Alger Hiss, instead of resisting totalitarianism as a whole. Instead of resisting the Communist party, all Chambers did was resist Hiss.
Enthymeme thesis: In the memoir, Witness, Whitaker Chambers writes about his own personal struggle with Communism, and his part in the very publicized trial of Alger Hiss. Because of his more self-focused writing style and the publicity of the Alger Hiss trial, Chambers memoir was not the most effective resistance to totalitarianism. Chambers did not resist the Communist party as a whole, but only the figurehead Alger Hiss.
Two passages:
- Chapter 7, section 9, pages 303-308
- Focuses on friendship too much (personal relationship)
- Humanizes Hiss, people sympathetic towards him
- Those focused on the case only focused on their relationship
- Chapter 12 pages 615-618 – Chambers decides to become a true witness
- Focuses too much on his own conversion to Catholicism
- Focuses too much on his decision to become a “witness”
- Too self involved- pity him as individual, not as a survivor of Communism
- Chapter 11, section 29, pages 570-585
- Focusing on a specific case does not lead to an effective stance against totalitarianism
- Case focusing on Hiss as an individual rather than a case against toaltitarianism
- Bibliographic sources:
- Compare to Ji Xianlin’s The Cowshed
- Tanenhaus, Sam. Whittaker Chambers : A Biography. First ed., Random House, 1997.
- Baehr, Peter. “The Informers: Hannah Arendts Appraisal of Whittaker Chambers and the Ex-Communists.” European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, vol. 1, no. 1, Feb. 2014, pp. 35–66., doi:10.1080/23254823.2014.909734.
- https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/article_6dd5dd29-da51-52ad-b290-87fa3ad6457d.html
- Sections:
- Use of memoir as writing style
- Focus on one specific case study
- Comparison to The Cowshed