Emmanuel Levinas defines ethics as “a comportment in which the other, who is strange and indifferent to you, who belongs neither to the order of your interest nor to your affections, at the same time matters to you. His alterity concerns you” (Is It Righteous To Be?, 49). This philosophy, which I studied in depth for my midterm essay, is prominent in many scenes in Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. In particular, this philosophy seems to be the theme of the conversation between Liss and Mostovskoy where both characters strive for transcendence. Neither of these characters is able to reach that transcendence though. Rather, the characters that do transcend in Life and Fate do it through motherhood and maternity. Maternity is the desire …ver más…

To understand alterity is to see the uniqueness between two individuals. A mother recognizes that although her child was literally once a part of her, it is now its own being. To feel unconditional responsibility for the other is to acknowledge that that alterity, that difference, matters to you. A mother cherishes a child even if it is not her own. She sees it as the other and is concerned for it. Maternal transparency is having no shame about your responsibility for the unique other while still not being overly proud of that responsibility. A mother neither withholds nor flaunts her role as a maternal figure; she is transparent. Sofya, Khristya and the old woman each execute these characteristics perfectly. We are first introduced to Sofya Levinton when she is captured in a group by Germans. There is no mention of her family and hardly any detail about her life before she is captured. She is very independent. When she realizes her life may be coming to an end, she wonders, “Who am I? In the end, who am I?” (196). This feeling of a lack of identity is because she does not feel she has lived her life completely and therefore, doesn’t know exactly who she is. There is something she is missing. At one point in her past, “she had felt ready to give up everything if only in some shabby, dark, low-ceilinged room she could be hugged by the arms of a child” (545). She may not have realized it, but the thing she was missing was the