Tuesday, March 2, 2010
A New Realization
While reading MAUS, a new realization really hit me. Throughout chapter one, the father's life is very nice, there is nothing especially bad about it. Attached to his life are possibilities that anyone can have. There are no limitations for him. The picture with his forearms on the bike really struck me because the numbers tattooed on his arm represented the dehumanization that transpired in the internment camps. I had always heard about how the Jews got their lives stolen from them by the Nazis, but I never had close to the feeling of what that was like for them. I can say that after reading chapter one of MAUS, I had as close to what I consider an empathetic feeling as possible. While reading the first chapter, the fear of the unfortunate events that would soon come was always in the back of my mind.
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I agree. However, I do have to say that while this reading in MAUS did stir some emotions for me, it is quite unlike most of the reading we have done before. Not only because it is written in the form of a graphic novel, but also because it is not quite as blunt and emotionally charged the way Night was. For me, I found it charming that Art decided to add a bit of humor here and there within the text through the character of his father (with his pills and the tendency to knock over his prescriptions). Because of this, even when I saw the drawing of the tattoo on his father's arm, I still felt that Wiesel's writing style and way of the describing the events struck me harder than this simple detached drawing. I'm excited to see what will be coming in the next few chapters though.
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