In the novel Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston and the novel Maus by Art Spiegelman the theme of suffering has a damaging effect on the human spirit. Suffering in both these stories come in different forms such as emotional, physical, and mental. No matter the form, it is still suffering.
Food depravation is a method that people use to affect the human spirit in a negative way. In the story Maus by Art Spiegelman, food is used to make the prisoners weak. For example, at the concentration camp Art’s dad is talking to his fellow prisoner Mandelbaum “I spilled most of my soup too. When I asked for more, they BEAT me" (Spiegelman pg. 29). This affects the human spirit because when people typically ask for more food, they don't get beaten. Food is also used as a currency in the camps. In this scene, Art’s dad is talking to the gestapo and the gestapo wants Vladek to fix his boot; “Can you fix this? I’ll give you a day’s ration of bread. For a day’s ration of bread I can fix anything! Next day I had the boot ready for this gestapo….Hmm. He left the boot and went without one word. And he came back with a whole sausage. You did a good job” (Spiegelman pg. 61). Food is used as currency because in this case Vladek had a skill of fixing boots and his reward for doing a good job was a whole sausage. This shows how valuable food is in the concentration camps. In the story Farewell to Manzanar, food is also used to destroy the human spirit. Jeanne, the author, is being fed by the staff at the camp and her meal was ".... scoops of canned Vienna sausage, canned string beans, steamed rice that had been cooked too long, and on top of the rice a serving of canned apricots. The Caucasian servers were thinking that...
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...pg. 23).This scene shows a survival mood because they are all trying to do their best to stay warm. In these camps, the guards did not provide the people with a housing heat source. The mood is an effective tool for expressing the suffering that occurred in both stories.
Suffering is a very real aspect in the story of Maus and Farewell to Manzanar. Suffering has devastating effects on a person’s spirits and wellbeing. Suffering did not just occur during the time of World War II; it is still a shattering reality occurring today. People today all over the world are still suffering withered it be physical, emotional, or mental; it is still suffering.
Works Cited
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki., and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000. Print.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon, 1986. N. pag. Print.
While obtaining food seemed to be the entire purpose of life for the people imprisoned in the camps, it often killed more people than it saved. Though focusing on food seemed like a logical thing to do when you are being starved, it was not always very effective in helping people survive. There are many situations in the book illustrating how living for the sole purpose of acquiring food—under any condition—could turn out to be lethal.
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James Houston. Farwell to Manzanar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973. Print.
Vol. 8. Chicago, IL: World Book, 2009. Print. G Freeman, Shanna.
The sleeping arrangement were poor. Their bed was made from thin straw and cardboard, they had old blankets (38). Early in the morning, prisoner are awoken and rush into the freezing cold in order to get morning bread. Prisoners think that the people next to them have a bigger piece of bread they will trade it. But in reality, the piece are almost the same size. In Monowitz-Buna concentration camp, bread is money to prisoners, there a lot of bargaining and trading happening
(It should be noted that when describing hardships of the concentration camps, understatements will inevitably be made. Levi puts it well when he says, ?We say ?hunger?, we say ?tiredness?, ?fear?, ?pain?, we say ?winter? and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and suffering in their homes. If the Lagers had lasted longer a new, harsh language would have been born; only this language could express what it means to toil the whole day?? (Levi, 123).)
The Europeans had bad concentration camps. They would barely feed the prisoners, and would work them to the bone. “Before being sent to a camp, a captured prisoner of
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The concept of suffering plays an important role in Christianity, regarding such matters as moral conduct, spiritual advancement and ultimate destiny. Indeed an emphasis on suffering pervades the Gospel of Mark where, it can be argued, we are shown how to "journey through suffering" (Ditzel 2001) in the image of the "Suffering Son of Man" (Mark 8:32), Jesus Christ. Although theologians have suggested that Mark was written to strengthen the resolve of the early Christian community (Halpern 2002, Mayerfeld 2005), the underlying moral is not lost on a modern reader grappling with multifarious challenges regarding faith in the face of suffering. In his article "A Christian Response to Suffering", William Marravee (1987) describes suffering as an "experience over which we men and women continue to stumble and fall". The way we view God is crucial to the way we view suffering according to Marravee, who delineates the disparity between a view of God as an ‘outsider’ and the biblical image of God – where God is an ‘insider’ who suffers with us in our struggle. This essay seeks to explain the Christian view of suffering and the purpose suffering can have in our lives.
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