preview

Children Of Monster Stalin

Decent Essays

A name is one of the first things we are defined with; it's a simple combination of words that becomes associated with our being. In Children of Monsters, Jay Nordlinger questions how much significance a name really holds. Each of the children mentioned in the book thus far have been related (or at least thought that they were related) to a well-known and brutal dictator. Their views on their fathers differ greatly. Some of the children, such as Jean-Marie Loret (he believed himself to be Hitler’s son) blindly praised their fathers by hanging large portraits upon their walls in their memories, while others, such as Svetlana (Stalin’s daughter) did their best to distance themselves from their father’s platform of hatred by traveling around the world. It was not the children’s actions that interested me the most in my reading however; it was the way they associated themselves with their surname. …show more content…

When Mussolini did not prevent the death of Edda’s husband, something he had the full capability of doing, she was torn. In a letter to her father she wrote, “You are no longer a father for me. I renounce the name Mussolini” (Nordlinger 13). In this statement Edda is associating her surname with evil, and wishes to abandon it. In a similar way, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana attempted to erase herself of the dictator name by adopting her mother’s surname Alliluyeva. She claimed that, “I could no longer tolerate the name of Stalin...Its sharp metallic sound lacerated my ears, my eyes, my heart” (Nordlinger 46). The names themself held no harm against these women, it was the association the names held. Edda wished to escape her hurtful and grieving past, while Svetlana wished to forget the awful things her father had been a part

Get Access