Susan Griffin's project is that she carefully constructs and describes history, particularly World War II, through the lives of several different people. She does not just state the history, she ties each of her topics and shows how they directly effected the other by the actions someone would take. For example, when Himmler sends all those people to the death camps, Helene was directly affected by this and Griffin went ahead and showed how because of Himmler's actions, Helene had her own story about the same conflict but in a totally different point of view. Griffin strikes all of these aspects in her essay. What is most compelling about the essay, however, is the way Griffin incorporated personal, family, and world history into a chilling story of narrative and autobiography, without ever losing the factual evidence the story provided. Many believe that history is what is read in textbooks, or what is seen on the news.
             If Susan Griffin were asked that question, she would probably argue that history is much more than that. It is about the minds and souls of the people who went through the historical event, not simply what happened. In her essay, Griffin incorporates stories of people from totally different backgrounds, and upbringings, including herself, all to describe their account of one time period. Each person's history is somehow connected with the next person's, and each story contributes equally to the larger view of history. Griffin inputs three types of histories in her text; personal, family and world history. In her personal history, she describes her life, and her childhood, which intertwines with her family history. However, she not only talks about her histories, she talks about the histories of the other characters in the essay to bring across the larger world history. One of the techniques's that Griffin uses to help the audience understand her concepts, is explaining two other story lines while telling her main s...