Preliminary Written Assignment Phase One

Due: September 20, 2016

Varian Fry

In the culminating assignment for Phase One of our course you will discuss the extent to which Varian Fry is an exemplar of Aristotelian virtue. In this preliminary assignment you need to prepare for the culminating assignment by discussing Varian Fry's choices, experiences, and reflections.

Discuss Fry's choice to go to Marseille to save Jewish intellectuals and artists from the concentration camps. What experiences may have given form to Fry's character such that he was able to make the decision to travel to Marseille to undertake his dangerous mission. You may well want to quote the passages from pages xi and xii concerning Fry's respect for democracy and the right of asylum. He also writes of his disdain for the tactics of the Gestapo. Further, on page xii, he states that he was motivated by "deep political convictions". In addition, Fry writes, on page xiii, of his debt of gratitude for the artistic expressions of the Jewish artists and intellectuals who were trapped in Marseille. He "felt obliged to help them". This may well have been the result of his exposure to the work of such authors as Franz Werfel and artists as Marc Chagall, in high school and college.

Further, consider the impact of Fry's witnessing the brutalization and dehumanization of the Jews in Germany in 1935 (as reported in his article in the New York Times, July 16, 1935.) on his decision to go to Marseille. Would witnessing such dehumanization, thus described and depicted, have affected Varian Fry's moral character? In this section you may well want to make reference to the original unpublished foreword in which Fry speaks of the difficulties and residual trauma of his efforts to save people from the Nazis. He says it was the "most intense experience of his life" (241), but he also writes that he is haunted by the "ghosts," ghosts of the living, whose story he is compelled to tell, and the ghosts of those he could not save.

Your paper – approximately two pages in length--needs an introduction with a topic sentence, sentences delineating the parts of the paper, and a sentence suggesting the conclusion. You need to make direct reference to the readings related to Fry (page numbers in parentheses) including The New York Times article, and to the film "Varian's War" with reasonably detailed reference to scenes and dialogue.

Documenting your sources. Most students state that they prefer to use, or are accustomed to using MLA format for citing sources. Therefore, the philosophy department recommends the following web site for reference to MLA format. (When you arrive at that site, click on "Documenting Sources" on the left side of the screen.) Please let me know if you have trouble accessing the site or if you have any questions. As an alternative that you may want to consider, here is a link to the Chicago style.