A Different Kind of Holocaust Essay - 2236 Words

Art Spiegelmans Maus is a renowned comic book that won a Pulitzer Prize. The book was published in two parts, Volume I: My Father Bleeds History, in 1986, and Volume II: And Here My Troubles Began, in 1991. It was later integrated into one single volume. The book told Spiegelmans desire to write about his fathers experiences during the Holocaust, as well as the experiences themselves. There had been numbers of Holocaust books over the decades, but Maus is different among all. After reading numerous Holocaust books, they become repetitive, because most people are aware of the tragic event. Maus offers not only the tale of the Holocaust, but stories about its victims, and the next generation as well. Its distinction was already†¦show more content†¦Also, this showed the race hierarchy; mice are considered as vermin, they are inferior to cats, which was how Nazis viewed Jews. Cats hunt mice, the same way Nazis wanted to kill all Jews. These characters of their nationalities wer e drawn identically in the book, such as Art and Vladek. They did not have differences in looks except Vladek had glasses; other than that, they looked exactly the same. By Spiegelman making all people within a nationality look alike, it showed the equality they all shared. Along with the usage of animals, the colors of the comic are black and white. It has an emphasis on the color black, to stress the tragedy of victims lives during the Holocaust. For example, in part two, chapter two, Jews bodies were colored with black lines to show their burns as the gasoline were colored white (Spiegelman 232). The color black is also predominate throughout the entirety of the book, especially when Jews arrived at camp Auschwitz. For example, in chapter two of part two, only the faces and hands of the Jews were white, the building and the ground were black (209). Spiegelmans usage of black and white create the eerie sense as it should be for such an event. With depictions of nationalities and t he element of black and white, there were images, dialogues, and commentaries from Vladek as he told the story. In the book, there were also maps of Poland and camps, along with diagrams of hideouts forShow MoreRelatedThe World Of The Holocaust885 Words   |  4 Pagestraumatic period, Holocaust-was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler s Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about six million Jews. The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews during the Nazi genocide - in 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Nazi Germany during World War 2. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. But today I will talk about the United States’ Response to the Holocaust. 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In Maus, every ethnic group is characterized by its own distinct animal: Jews are mice, Germans are cats, non-Jewish Poles are pigs, and so on. This deliberate choice alludes to the extreme essentialization of identity during the Holocaust. Just asRead MoreThe Memory Thief By Gil Kofman1323 Words   |  6 PagesThe Memory Thief (US 2007, dir. Gil Kofman) explores the effects of post memory (Marianne Hirsch) on second-generation Holocaust survivors. How is this memory of the Holocaust passed on and what kind of different responses to this memory are shown in the film? The purpose of this essay is to understand Marianne Hirsch’s concept of Post memory in relation to Holocaust tragedy. Furthermore, the essay is going to analyse the meaning and effects of post memory on the second-generation. 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