Monday, February 25, 2008
Honesty
I was really moved by the sheer honesty of these books — not just the author's honesty that his dad often drove him crazy, but the honesty of the concentration camp story, how it wasn't just a simple tale of good and evil, how it managed to convey the complexity of human behavior under extreme stress. Any thoughts on this?
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I liked that, too. He wasn't afraid to show the way Jews would sell each other out to save themselves. Even his father did some questionable things in the interest of self-preservation. I thought it did an excellent job of depicting the desperation of the people. One panel really struck me, the one where Vladek says the prisoners would fight until they were bloody if someone spilled their soup. And he says, "To be hungry, you don't know what it's like."
That panel struck me, too — how the situation made dignity and compassion impossible.
There was also the complex issue of people who were just opportunists from beginning to end — like the scammers in the ghetto. They were rotten to begin with and used their fellows' misfortune to their own advantage. And then there people who were essentially decent but were ultimately reduced to animal-level tactics to survive.
It certainly makes questionable how we define "moral" behavior.
I was struck too by the pigs (I understand the gentile reference but did polish pigs make anyone else uncomfortable?) How in one scene they managed to seem cold and selfish for denying to help, but also prudent and rightly cautious to protect their own hides/families.
We talked about this in my class (again with Schindler's list) how do we classify someone as immoral (or a sinner or evil) if they shoot Jews under orders from their superiors but then go home and are a caring father and a kind son to aging parents.
Or conversely how do we name as immoral the soup stealer in the concentration camp who is simply trying to survive another day.
Doesn't Vladek say something about it's not about being good or bad that made survivors, it was luck?
Right, and Art talks with his therapist (another survivor, which I thought was strange) about how he admires his father for surviving, but does that mean the people who did not survive were less admirable? Of course not, it was mostly a matter of circumstance and luck.
I've seen quite a bit written about the Poles being depicted as pigs. But I think it's unfair to characterize the choice as a slam on the Poles. Throughout the story, Poles are depicted as they were: Some were helpful and kind, some were selfish and racist. I didn't see Spiegelman's position as anti-Pole in any way. I mean, to depict the Germans, he chose cats, which are beloved family pets. That hardly makes the book pro-Nazi.
In the end, his use of animals was meant to satirize the Nazi position about races of people, not to affirm them, and I think that's the way to look at the pig issue.
Good points. "Morality" appears in a different light when survival is at stake. It's fascinating how different people coped differently in that environment — and what became of love and trust.
I was struck by the luck factor, too. I think Vladek certainly had a lot of survival skills (most notably his will power, but his ultimate survival really was a matter of luck. That's part of what made the story so compelling. At virtually any moment, at the whim of so many different people on so many different days, he could have been killed.
Excellent points about the pig, Erin. I totally agree. And I didn't really understand why the pig symbol would be any more insulting than the mouse symbol (mice are rodents!). And as you say, Erin, the cat symbol certainly can't be interpreted as favorable. I never saw it as anything but satire.
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