MAUS

Reading this book, the first thing to come to mind is the movie La Vita e Bella. For those of you who haven't watched this movie, it is a remarkable, beautifully made Italian film about the Holocaust. The first part of this movie is a romance, but the fairytale ends once the Holocaust comes in and turns the protagonists' lives upside down. What sets this movie apart is the way it handles the Holocaust. The father turns the horror into a sort of "game" for his young son in order to ensure his survival. He simplifies things down to a point system and renames the cruelties so that the child can get through the traumatic experience intact. The trailer I've posted below is a good summary of the movie.

Besides the obvious connection this has to Maus, namely that they are both about the Holocaust, what's fascinating is considering this from the point of view of the child of a survivor. Well, in La Vita e Bella, the child IS a survivor, but his father kept him very sheltered and protected so he would not see the terrors of Auschwitz. So his experience was very different from the norm. The point is, considering this from the point of view of one who was very close to the Holocaust (through a father), but didn't exactly share the same experience. How do they comprehend the situation? How do they make sense of their parents' experiences or psychological reactions? How do they deal with growing up in a family so scarred and so strong? Artie Spiegelman wonders, "I mean, I can't even make any sense out of my relationship with my father... How am I supposed to make any sense out of Auschwitz?... of the Holocaust?...I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz WITH my parents so i could really know what they lived through! ... I guess it's SOME kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did." (14-16)

trcs.wikispaces.com

Art thinking/lamenting aloud

What both of these works did though, was alter something about the Holocaust to make it almost "easier" to swallow the truth of history. Perhaps easier is the wrong word ... maybe something that distanced the reader/viewer from the Holocaust, but even that isn't right, because it still made an impact in its own way. For example, by altering the Holocaust into a game, Gio (the protagonist of the movie) protected his son's sanity as well as his physical self. He ensured that he would not have to answer his son's probing questions about human cruelty, questions to which he had no answer, and protected him from viewing or experiencing the worst of the Holocaust. The reader, however, does not experience it the same way. The viewer instead is struck by the poignancy of reducing the worst of human behavior into a childish game - because the concept the Holocaust is based on in the first place, that anyone "different" is immediately bad, is a remarkably immature one. It also connects a dark blot of human history to the most innocent of things - a child, and is all the more heartwrenching. In Maus, Art Spiegelman turns all the humans into animals. In a sense, this distances the reader because it can be harder to connect to a nonhuman,, but at the same time, there is no doubt that the animals are a metaphor for differences between humans, and not about animal cruelty. I think it is very true that Speigelman's metaphor self -destructs, mostly because it is oversimplified, and creates an analogy between ethnicities/religions and species. But really, humans are a single species, with nationalities being perhaps like different subspecies (if a connection must be made). I think the problem arises because humans are too complex. What is a French Jew as opposed to a Polish Jew? Is religion more prominent an identifier, or ethnicity/culture? And if all Nazis are cats, what about Nazis who are not German? Are pigs just for Polish Nazis/guards, or for all Poles? Then what about Polish Jews again? Its back to the beginning again. Humans are just way too layered and complex to be grouped into a set generalization.

Aha! So I just had a mini-epiphany while typing. Spiegelman's self-destructing metaphor saves itself. The point is that humans CAN'T be generalized. You can't take a group of people and lump them together, because everyone is different. Everyone is diverse. How can generalizations even function? If you just take our class - each and every one of us has something unique that makes us stand out, and different from each other. And then if we take the group and make it bigger, that truth will still hold true.

http://www.synagogues.com/article/view/the-yellow-star

How would you have treated them?

As to the question, "what would I do if I was in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust?" I really don't see this as a fair question. No one wants to say that they would turn the other cheek, but its also incredibly difficult to say that you'd be a hero. Why? Because, without having faced that intense level of stress and pressure, you don't know for sure. I would definitely be OPPOSED to everything that was happening, and I'd hate the injustice, and I would probably feel like screaming out against it. I'd want to do something, to make a difference, to stop the atrocities, to keep my neighbors safe, to keep my friends and family safe, BUT. That's the problem, isn't it? What if standing up against the Gestapo put your own family in danger? Which it did. What if standing up against injustice led to your arrest and mysterious disappearance, leaving your family without a protector? It's like when Art wonders, "I don't get it... Why didn't the Jews at least TRY to resist?" and his father responds, "It wasn't so easy like you think. Everyone was so starving and frightened, and tired they couldn't BELIEVE even what's in front of their eyes." (73) This concept of "It wasn't so easy like you think," holds true for the question raised at the beginning of this paragraph. What we THINK we are capable of may not be what we're really capable of. At the same time, we are also probably a whole lot more resourceful and capable than we give ourselves credit for. Maybe we'd be able to smuggle Jews to safety, or aid them on an escape mission, or smuggle someone a meal. Even something that small could mean a lot.

Who knows what we're capable of?