The Interplay Of History And Memory In The Fiftieth Gate By Mark Baker

Good Morning,

The interplay of history and memory can exist in both harmoniously as well as under strain. I’m going to show this through personal experience, documented experience and memory in ‘The Fifteith Gate’ by Mark baker, Maus:a survivors story’ by Art Speigelman and…

Documented experience → History

Personal experience → documented experience

Fiftieth Gate

The Fiftieth Gate is Baker’s journey to confirm the memories of his parents in the Holocaust with historical documentation and through which often represents personal experience as often unreliable, fragile & highly subjective. In a description of his grandfather, Baker establishes that in time humans’ ability to accurately recall their memories and experiences is destroyed, “Old age tarnished his noble aura as his mind fell prey to dementia”. The use of animal imagery is used to suggest the fragile nature of memory as it ‘fell prey’, thus making individual recollections less reliable than proven historical documentation. Distrust in the memory of personal experience can also be seen in the uncertainty of Yossl’s accounts. Yossl states “’Hinda and Leibush were married in Weirzbnik’ … I pass him their wedding certificate that was buried in an old archive in central Poland” and his reply “This I do not remember”. The uses of verisimilitude in emphasising the documents origins add truthfulness and certainty to his statement, while the juxtaposition with yossl’s reaction highlight shortcommings of memory. Baker thus represents memories as biased and discriminatory in their representation in comparison to the averarching view that history gives of the past

Throughout The Fiftieth Gate, Baker becomes open minded when considering the value of personal experience, and begins ...

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...rm the other’s story. This does not, however, mean that they are considered equal. Memory can be seen as slightly privileged over memory. When Art learns of the destruction of his mother’s diary he responds by calling his father a “murderer”. The use of exclamatory punctuation and spiked speech bubble conveys the anger and shock over the destruction of memories. The validity of memory is also never discussed as dates given for memories are never confirmed but assumed to be true. On the other hand, history is shown as unreliable. Valdek remarks that after the end of the war he “passed once a photo place what had a camp uniform – a new and clean one – to make souvenir photos.” The actual photo is used in the book as historical documentation. This show how history can be perverted as photos are seen as objective and historical but this photograph is clearly staged.