The first of our full-length texts
this term is Art Spiegelman's splendid graphic novel
Maus I,
the first of a two-book series that tells a fictional story of survival
during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. Yet to say it is
"fiction" is too easy, for the story has documented historical elements
and too many parallels with the life of the author and his father, who
was a Holocaust survivor. So this is Spiegelman's memoir of his
troubled relationship with his father and with the legacy of the
Holocaust, which frames his father's version of the events of the
Holocaust. And the story has the complexity and ambiguity to seem true as well. Yet how
true can it be when the Jews are represented as mice and the Germans as
cats? Perhaps truer than any true "non-fiction account.
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Essay #1 Assignment: Analysis
TBA
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| We will be watching this film by Akira Kurosawa to explore the holocaust that is part of the United States' legacy. How often do we think of ourselves as needing forgiveness for attrocities? We will also discuss some of the controversy surrounding the release of this film. |
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| Interview: As the first step toward building your research project you will conduct an interview with a family or community member about an event in history that he or she lived through. Details about this assignment can be found here. |
Bernhard
Schlink's The Reader, an Oprah book, is an
astonishing novel, one that wrestles with the difficult question, who or what is to blame for Nazi attrocities in WW II? Schlink, German judge, reopens the issue, asking, to what extent can guilt
for evil acts be passed on to future generations? What
responsibility do the powerless have to resist the commands of the
powerful? Is innocence possible? Is there anyone who is
purely evil?
Through the story of a German boy growing into manhood in the years
following WW II, Schlink explores the aftermath of the Holocaust for
the perpetrators and their children. This novel will challenge
some of your most deeply held notions about history, responsibility, the legacy of guilt, the power of truth, and the possibility of forgiveness.
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Read the progressive historian Howard Zinn's speech about Holocaust history. He takes a controversial position on how and why we should remember the genocide. How do you respond to his position?
The question of how we should remember history is a terribly important one. How is it that we can remember some events better than others? Could it be that we who remember value some people over others and so remember their suffering before others'? Could it be that we tend to forget the history that is embarrassing to us in the present? Could it be that we are only reminded of the history that serves some agenda in the present?
Note that while Zinn discusses the remarkable industry of remembering the Holocaust others with a view to whitewashing the past actively deny that the Holocaust ever happened. |
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The Midterm
This in-class essay will address issues of how to deal with the legacy of guilt carried by the children of perpetrators of attrocities.
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| Walter Abish's novel about Germany in the seventies explores a country and a people on one hand looking forward and on another unable to escape the past. The novel is an outsider's view of the Germans' struggle with their history and it deals directly with our stereotypes, preconceptions, and our expectations. |
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Essay 3: Patterns
Link here
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