Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Maus
Art Spiegelman does an amazing job with the graphic novel Maus. At first to me it seemed a bit weird reading about Mice as Men and them undergoing the same hardships that us humans went through. I however have some doubts about the upcoming chapters. The whole job of the Nazi's in the camps was to dehumanize the Jews. By representing the horrors that the Jewish and other "undesirables" went through through animals seems to be the fullest kind of dehumanization. Although we have not yet encountered any scenes of violence, I feel that I will be to detached from the story to feel the level of connection that I believe I should be feeling while reading about humans murdering other humans in cold blood. In class we have often spoke of becoming numb to the events as they are too horrible. I for one however believe that it is better to be numb than to feel nothing at all when it comes to the sickening events that transpired in the second world war. However, I will still maintain an open mind as we move forward through this novel, and look forward to reading it.
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I respectfully disagree on your view of the mice. I tend to view the Germans and Jews as a cat-mouse thing, similar to the show Tom and Jerry. When we reach any scenes of violence, I don't think I'd be detached because the mice are inferior to cats, as were the Jews. I can view the Jews as mice in this story because they can't fight the cats/Germans. Although you cannot say mice and cats are the same as Jews and Nazis, you can find many similarities.
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