Select Chapter Summaries of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table
By Scott Albright
Primo Levi compares events in his life as a prisoner during the holocaust to the periodic table of elements. The following are summaries of a select few of these elements. Phosphorus: At the beginning of this chapter Levi is looking for a new job, which he finds and talks about throughout the reading. He briefly discusses his experience as a Jew working in a new environment under the time of Starace. Most of the chapter involves Levi’s work in finding a cure for diabetes. He also spends a lot of time discussing different relationships he has with the new people at his job. One new relationship is with a woman named Giulia, who Levi takes a liking to. When Giulia asks Levi what he is thinking about after an ordeal involving her lover he said, “phosphorous.” Levi didn’t want to hear her good news. He blocked it out in his head, but later on reflects on the situation with a more positive outlook. He wrote, “ . . . a veil, a breath, a throw of the dice deflected us onto two divergent paths, which were not ours.” Here he is talking about fate. |
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Gold
Levi is taken captive by Nazi militiamen and held as a prison inside a camp of some kind. Levi describes the life of captivity and explains his experience with other prisoners. One of the other prisoners is a contraband smuggler who pans for gold in the warmer months.
Levi writes that he “courageously awaits death,” and that he would gladly try to pan for gold, not to get rich, but to try a new experience. In this chapter I see a spark of hope resonating in Levi’s mind even though death is at hand. This inkling of hope that rests in the spirit of man is what many prisoners, including those at Auschwitz, used to help them through the day. To help them survive.
Cerium
Two years later Levi is still a prisoner, using his skills as a chemist to make money by selling matches. He spends night after night fiddling with the cerium to produce his flints, all the while expecting to die at any time. It is the hunger that drives him to steal the cerium in order to make flame for others.
Whether Levi knows it or not, he is using the match as a metaphor for his little spark of hope that remains within. The hunger for food, the hunger to survive, it is this that keeps him working, keeps him alive. He speaks of the Russian liberators and the freight cars that transported the surviving prisoners, yet he does not speak of his own destiny at this time. This chapter is sad because of the death and misery, but also something to rejoice because of the tales of survival and life.
Sulfur
This short and strange chapter has varying degrees of meaning, but I particularly like the quote about the smell of sulfur: “The B 41 (sulfur) was already weighed out, in three cardboard boxes: he put it in cautiously and, despite the mask, which may have leaked a bit, immediately smelled the dirty, sad smell that emanated from the mixture, and thought that maybe the priest was right too, when he said that in Hell there is a smell of sulfur: after all, even the dogs don’t like it, everyone knows that.”
In this chapter I made a connection between the worker and the servant, that the worker was but a servant in hell, angrily pushing along through the day just to start it all over again the next.
Uranium
In this chapter Levi talks about a man named Bonino who sends him a package claiming it is uranium. Levi soon finds that the metal is actually cadmium but allows the man to tell the story as if the metal were truly something special.
I find this chapter to be interesting because it lacks the same direct link to the chapter name and the element it relates to. I think Levi is trying to suggest that uranium is truly a sneaky element with a potential to affect human behavior to the point of lying. It also suggests that although man is susceptible to such lies, many people may play along with the lies, as does Levi in this chapter.
Carbon
Levi ends the book by using the flow of carbon through life and death and back to life as an example of the universe itself. I like the way he shows how the elements not only shape us, but lives beyond us. Perhaps in the end we all become but another one of the elements.
Levi is taken captive by Nazi militiamen and held as a prison inside a camp of some kind. Levi describes the life of captivity and explains his experience with other prisoners. One of the other prisoners is a contraband smuggler who pans for gold in the warmer months.
Levi writes that he “courageously awaits death,” and that he would gladly try to pan for gold, not to get rich, but to try a new experience. In this chapter I see a spark of hope resonating in Levi’s mind even though death is at hand. This inkling of hope that rests in the spirit of man is what many prisoners, including those at Auschwitz, used to help them through the day. To help them survive.
Cerium
Two years later Levi is still a prisoner, using his skills as a chemist to make money by selling matches. He spends night after night fiddling with the cerium to produce his flints, all the while expecting to die at any time. It is the hunger that drives him to steal the cerium in order to make flame for others.
Whether Levi knows it or not, he is using the match as a metaphor for his little spark of hope that remains within. The hunger for food, the hunger to survive, it is this that keeps him working, keeps him alive. He speaks of the Russian liberators and the freight cars that transported the surviving prisoners, yet he does not speak of his own destiny at this time. This chapter is sad because of the death and misery, but also something to rejoice because of the tales of survival and life.
Sulfur
This short and strange chapter has varying degrees of meaning, but I particularly like the quote about the smell of sulfur: “The B 41 (sulfur) was already weighed out, in three cardboard boxes: he put it in cautiously and, despite the mask, which may have leaked a bit, immediately smelled the dirty, sad smell that emanated from the mixture, and thought that maybe the priest was right too, when he said that in Hell there is a smell of sulfur: after all, even the dogs don’t like it, everyone knows that.”
In this chapter I made a connection between the worker and the servant, that the worker was but a servant in hell, angrily pushing along through the day just to start it all over again the next.
Uranium
In this chapter Levi talks about a man named Bonino who sends him a package claiming it is uranium. Levi soon finds that the metal is actually cadmium but allows the man to tell the story as if the metal were truly something special.
I find this chapter to be interesting because it lacks the same direct link to the chapter name and the element it relates to. I think Levi is trying to suggest that uranium is truly a sneaky element with a potential to affect human behavior to the point of lying. It also suggests that although man is susceptible to such lies, many people may play along with the lies, as does Levi in this chapter.
Carbon
Levi ends the book by using the flow of carbon through life and death and back to life as an example of the universe itself. I like the way he shows how the elements not only shape us, but lives beyond us. Perhaps in the end we all become but another one of the elements.