Buy this work. That's all that need be said. Nothing will bring you closer to experiencing an event than the raw recollection as told by someone who survived it. I'm sure Spiegelman's tolerance for pain is through the roof, being able to sit there and listen to this inane ranting. Despite that, I can see that he learned much of it.
Something I believe is that there is no better training than fighting to survive, so when it was mentioned in class today that survivors of such atrocities as Auschwitz and the Holocaust are typically cold and unwelcoming in the extreme, I'm not so quick to render judgement. I don't know what such horrors are truly like, and hopefully I never will, but I can imagine what they're like, and Art does a spectacular job painting that image for us.
His use of animals to represent different ethnic groups is a welcome change from what I'm used to. It forced me to try and feel things from another perspective, which is exactly what Art had to do when he interviewed his father. Maybe Vladek sounded like a cat when he poured out so much information. It's entirely possible that such vivid and horrifying memories were too much to take in all at once, so it was bound to sound like incoherent babbling sometimes. Not to mention the raw emotional effect it might have had, hence the name of the first volume: "My Father Bleeds History." It's truly a powerful thing. I believe it deserved the Pulitzer Prize.
When you've found yourself in a hell such as the Nazi genocidal crusade, you'll learn things that you never expected to. This raw pragmatism that Vladek was venting is only the aftereffect of what he had to become in order to survive the deadly conditions of his internment. I don't blame him at all for his behaviour. I hope he finds his peace at long last.
Hopefully works such as this will serve as a reminder to mankind and hopefully such terrible events won't ever blight the world again. Despite this, we do live in a world where it's profit against humanity, and all I can ask is: what side are you on?
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