He talks about he bitter smells of where he lives, the indignity of having to share living spaces with strange families, the presence of blackened calfskins that are the tools of the manual trades practiced by the residents, and above all the awareness that he lives in a ghetto. But his anger is not merely against anti-Semitism or his lack of material things, for he thinks at first he might have some comfort, if he could only believe -- but he realizes on the eve of his Bar Mitzvah that he cannot. The title of the book refers to the famous Biblical story of Lot's wife, who was forbidden to look back on the condemned cities of Sodom and Gomorrah lest she be turned into a pillar of salt. The author Memmi clearly longs to look back at his early childhood with nostalgia which was happy though poor, but he cannot permit himself to do so, for it is gone, as is the faith that...

The intrusion of history in the form of the Holocaust further complicates Memmi's relationship with his native land. After the Axis occupation Alexandre could no longer enjoy a purely academic internal debate within his soul about his Jewish identity. Instead, World War II made the identity and fate of the world's Jewish community a matter of pressing importance.
Who am I' is not merely a question of late adolescent angst on a personal level for the author. And even within the camps, there are class and religious distinctions -- Always, Alexandre strives to find a way to be French, Jewish, and Tunisian all at once, and feels as if he fails. Eventually, torn between these conflicting influences, he decides to leave his native land.

Works Cited

Memmi, Albert. The Pillar of Salt. New York: Beacon Press; Reissue, 1992