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Not here: here the thing got serious; the confrontation with the Matter. Mother, with the enemy-mother was harder and closer. At two o’clock in the afternoon, Professor D., with an ascetic and absent-minded face distributed to each of us one exact gram of a certain very fine powder: for the next day, it was necessary to complete the qualitative analysis, which means, to report which metals and non-metals it was contained there. To make a written report in a dissertation way stating ‘yes’ or ‘not’, why it was not admitted any doubts or hesitations: each time there should be a choice, a deliberation; a mature and responsible action for which fascism had not prepared us, and exhaling a good, dry and clean smell. [...] (Chapter Iron).
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Between us, Sandro was a medium height, thin but muscular lonely young man, who not even in colder days used to wear a coat. He used to come to the classes using fake velvet beaded pants, rough wool socks, and sometimes, a small black coat that reminded me Renato Fucini. [...] (Sandro seemed to be made of iron, and he was linked to the iron by an ancient kinship: he told me that the fathers of his parents have been boilers (magnín) and smiths (fré) from the canaves valleys, manufacturers of nails in the coal forge; they strapped the wheels of cars with incandescent rims, beating the iron plate to the point of deafness: and he himself, whenever discovered a red shaft of the iron in the rock, it seemed to him to find again a friend. [...] (Chapter Iron).
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He used to keep in a drawer a finely ornate diploma in which it was written in elegant characters that to Primo Levi, of the Jewish race it was being conferred the Chemistry graduation with the highest score and praise: then, this was an ambiguous document, one half glory and the other a mock, one half absolution, the other a conviction. It was kept inside that drawer since July of 1941, and in November it was finished; the world was precipitating itself in the catastrophe, and around me there was nothing happening. (Chapter Nickel).
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Teacher. And there is a part there when you perceived that there is a strong connection of this story with the story they told about the nickel, because when they talked that he got into college, and there was a professor who was super strict and that he should make the separation, to make quantitative analyses, he did not accept less than excellence, right? All this construed the strong chemical knowledge in Primo Levi, that later after his graduation, when he talked about his diploma kept in a drawer since 1941, he started using the chemical knowledge from college to extract from there the nickel and other things. Student 1. And there is also the issue of Sandro being so ((impossible to understand)) in nature//
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Teacher. Yes, as in the beginning, Sandro was a very shy person, he seemed to know nothing, but as the time passed by, he started showing to be a very strong person. / Then the iron/ Then we go, all that story of Sandro’s tenacity, his hardness before life in a very difficult context; and he made an association of Sandro’s life, Sandro’s past for everything he had to overcome, he even tells that he was wearing pants that looked like velvet, and so,, that Sandro enjoyed sports very much, right? He enjoyed skiing and performing other activities. //
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Student 1. He describes a bit of Sandro’s life in order to be able to // Teacher. Yes. He thinks with admiration, right? That he, he had with Sandro, right? And this is why the chapter is denominated / iron, right? Not the chemical element iron, where the major part of you perceived that the chapter, despite of bringing, the chapters despite of bringing chemical elements, it does not speak about the chemical element per se//
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Student 1: These are truly associations, right // Teacher. Yes, exactly; he uses chemical elements to describe situations, persons, facts in the context of his life, which is a reflection of the properties of the elements within the context that persons are living in this event, the Second/ World War.
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