Maus II by Art Spiegelman
I think the whole point in telling this story is to make people care about what happened. In including sequences like this, Spiegelman accomplishes this. If he just included statistics or said that Vladek knew so-and-so and that so-and-so didn't make it, we would feel sorry for him, but we wouldn't truly care. By having a story like Mandelbaum's and ending it with an uplifting anecdote like this one, he makes us care before we find out that he didn't make it. I don't know about anyone else, but that part hit me. There were a lot of cases like that in this comic...especially when your brain kicks in and reminds you that all of this actually happened.
Comments (2)
The tales of the little acts of charity are what tug at your hearstrings. We all feel sorry for survivors, but this stuff makes us care and almost cry. My favorite Holocaust story is about a Rabbi who would pass by a farm every day and say Good Morning to the non-Jewish farmer, who never said a word. This continued for years. Eventually, the Rabbi was thrown in Auscwitz. The Farmer was an S.S. guard at the camp. When the Rabbi was up for role call, the farmer looked at him and said Good Morning. He helped the poor Rabbi survive the camp.
Posted by Daniella Choynowski | November 8, 2007 10:40 AM
Posted on November 8, 2007 10:40
The only way that we can make people care about things that happen in the past is that we have to have a human element in the equation. If not it will be for nothing.
Posted by Kevin "Kelo The Great" Hinton | November 8, 2007 1:53 PM
Posted on November 8, 2007 13:53