Although Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor I and II, achieved critical success when they were first published, some Holocaust survivors criticized Spiegelman for making a comic book out of their tragedy. In “Cultural Criticism,” Adorno implicates Maus by stating that art cannot provide a voice for suffering “without immediately being betrayed by it” and believes that to “write a poetry,” for instance, “after Auschwitz is barbaric” (Adorno 34). Conversely, Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660, in spite of being published in the same medium, did not face as much backlash as Maus did given that it was the “first published memoir” of the Japanese American internment experience during World War II (Zhou 51). It seems that academics are still reluctant to accept graphic novels as a legitimate scholarly source …show more content…
Given her circumstances, the graphic memoir likewise serves as the best medium for Okubo to document the abject horror of the internment camps as she was able to effectively encapsulate the visceral living conditions through the interplay between the emotionally charged illustrations and dispassionate text. Through this particular methodology, Okubo initiated a discussion regarding the morality of the internment camps that may have contributed to shifting the American mindset from accepting the camps to perhaps deeming them as unethical. As cameras and other “modes of media technology endowed with evidentiary weight” were “not permitted in the camps,” there is very little documentation and records of the Japanese American internment from the actual evacuees themselves (Introduction VIII). Citizen 13660 serves as a recourse for Okubo, a self-appointed observer, reporter, and an actual intern of the camps, as the graphic memoir functions as an alternative method of
To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic novel written by Harper Lee. The novel is set in the depths of the Great Depression. A lawyer named Atticus Finch is called to defend a black man named Tom Robinson. The story is told from one of Atticus’s children, the mature Scout’s point of view. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, the Finch Family faces many struggles and difficulties. In To Kill a Mockingbird, theme plays an important role during the course of the novel. Theme is a central idea in a work of literature that contains more than one word. It is usually based off an author’s opinion about a subject. The theme innocence should be protected is found in conflicts, characters, and symbols.
“She took a chance by entering a Berkeley art contest through the mail and won.” (The Life of Mine Okubo) Mine was able to leave behind the isolation she experienced during the camps by winning the contest. Another case where invisibility was resisted was when Mine sketched her daily life in the camps. “Internees were not allowed to have cameras, but Mine wanted to document what was happening in the camps. She put her artistic talents to use making sketches of daily life inside the fences.” (The Life of Mine Okubo) Instead of using recording devices to reveal what internment camp life was, Mine used art. Likewise, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, also known as “The Bird,” was a Japanese sergeant who mistreated the prisoners of war. “Time ticked on, and still Louie remained, the beam over his head, his eyes on the Bird’s face, enduring long past when he should have collapsed.” (Hillenbrand 213) Watanabe’s central target was Louie Zamperini because of his running career in the past. As a result, he often abused Louie more than the other prisoners. Prisoners of war and internees will “resist invisibility” while in the
The novel, Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, tells her family’s true story of how they struggled to not only survive, but thrive in forced detention during World War II. She was seven years old when the war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942. Her life dramatically changed when her and her family were taken from their home and sent to live at the Manzanar internment camp. Along with ten thousand other Japanese Americans, they had to adjust to their new life living behind barbed wire. Obviously, as a young child, Jeanne did not fully understand why they had to move, and she was not fully aware of the events happening outside the camp. However, in the beginning, every Japanese American had questions. They wondered why they had to leave. Now, as an adult, she recounts the three years she spent at Manzanar and shares how her family attempted to survive. The conflict of ethnicities affected Jeanne and her family’s life to a great extent.
Farewell to Manzanar Beginning in March of 1942, in the midst of World War II, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were forcefully removed from their homes and ordered to relocate to several of what the United States has euphemistically labeled “internment camps.” In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston describes in frightening detail her family’s experience of confinement for three and a half years during the war. In efforts to cope with the mortification and dehumanization and the boredom they were facing, the Wakatsukis and other Japanese-Americans participated in a wide range of activities. The children, before a structured school system was organized, generally played sports or made trouble; some adults worked for extremely meager wages, while others refused and had hobbies, and others involved themselves in more self-destructive activities. The smaller children that were confined to their families seemed to be generally unaware of the hardships they were facing.
Farewell to Manzanar is sociologist and writer Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's first hand account of her interment in the Japanese camps during World War II. Growing up in southern California, she was the youngest of ten children living in a middle-to lower class, but comfortable life style with her large family. In the beginning of her story, she told about how her family was close, but how they drifted apart during and after their internment in the camp. The ironic part of it is that her family spent their entire time together in the same camp. So why did her family drift apart so? What was once the center of the family scene; dinner became concealed with the harsh realities of the camp. This reflects the loss of many of today's family values, and may have even set the bar for southern California's style of living today. Also, in a broader United State's historical theme, their internment reflected the still pungent racism and distrust of foreign identities, even though most of them were native-born US citizens and had never been to Japan.
Denied citizenship by the United States, a man without a country, he was tormented and interrogated by the government based on this reality, labeled a “disloyal” citizen to the U.S. Severing Ko from the remainder of his family, the FBI detained as many as 1370 Japanese-Americans, classifying them as “dangerous enemy aliens.” As much as a year would pass before he would see his family again, joining them at Manzanar, a concentration camp. Forced to destroy all memoirs of his Japanese heritage, fearful such things would allude to Japanese allegiance, Ko no lo...
Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words, Images from America’s Concentration Camps. New York: Cornell University Press, 1987. Print.
By means of comic illustration and parody, Art Spiegelman wrote a graphic novel about the lives of his parents, Vladek and Anja, before and during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II delves into the emotional struggle he faced as a result of his father’s failure to recover from the trauma he suffered during the Holocaust. In the novel, Vladek’s inability to cope with the horrors he faced while imprisoned, along with his wife’s tragic death, causes him to become emotionally detached from his son, Art. Consequently, Vladek hinders Art’s emotional growth. However, Art overcomes the emotional trauma his father instilled in him through his writing.
The guards won’t let them do anything that they normally do and experience, along with beating them for not understanding the orders of the Japanese. I believe that this is an example of dehumanization because the guards are taking away what the men are used to. Mine experienced the perspective of feeling invisible as well as other Japanese-Americans in internee camps when they were given a number for their whole family, “My family name was reduced to No. Mine and other Japanese-American internees were very good at resisting invisibility in clever ways, such as when they weren’t allowed to have cameras, “Internees were not allowed to have cameras, but Miné wanted to document what was happening inside the camps. She put her artistic talent to use making sketches of daily life inside the fences” (The Life of Mine Okubo). Mine is defying the rules of the camp by creating art about the people in their “daily lives” at the camp that she is located in.
Wu, Hui. “Writing and Teaching behind Barbed Wire: An Exiled Composition Class in a Japanese-American Internment Camp.” College Composition and Communication 59.2 (2007): 237-262. Web. 10 January 2014.
The victims of the Holocaust lose sight of who they are during this time and begin to live their life by playing a part they believe they were because of their race. Loman discussed the irony behind the cat-and-mouse metaphor that Spiegelman uses in his graphic novel in his article titled “’Well Intended Liberal Slop’: Allegories of Race in Spiegelman’s Maus”. In his article he states,
In Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the audience is led through a very emotional story of a Holocaust survivor’s life and the present day consequences that the event has placed on his relationship with the author, who is his son, and his wife. Throughout this novel, the audience constantly is reminded of how horrific the Holocaust was to the Jewish people. Nevertheless, the novel finds very effective ways to insert forms of humor in the inner story and outer story of Maus. Although the Holocaust has a heart wrenching effect on the novel as a whole, the effective use of humor allows for the story to become slightly less severe and a more tolerable read.
FYI (This is a biased written paper written if one were to defend Japanese Internment)
Using lines and basic shapes to emphasize shading and detail and then teamed with such a complex theme, Art’s story and graphics join together in a complimentary marriage. With the nearly childlike drawings and the intense mature storyline, there is a message that this is being written by the child telling the story of the parent. The story emphasizes his father’s inability to grow and repair from his past but even without the words you can almost see that Art has never truly be able to move past his the trauma of growing up with his parents. Using his frustrations and the need to explore the history of his father’s idiosyncrasies, Art creates a poignant story not only about the tragedy of the holocaust, but of the realities of being a child growing up with survivor parents.
Faulkner’s The Reivers is a story that follows a young man of only eleven years old as he is thrust from his comfortable home into the real world. He has had blinders on his entire life, but after he steal’s a car and drives to mention, spends the night in a brothel, and comes face to face with the darker more sinister and depressing aspects of humanity. Faulkner captures a darker side of the world in the novel, but it is done in a way that is light hearted even though Lucius is seen to struggle with the large amount of lust and greed humans can feel. It is a coming of age story that follows the antics of a few insane people who from the way they act seem as though natural selection looked the other way for them or are always one step ahead