For Art and Vladek, it seems as though the primary means of transferring trauma is through story-telling. Art asks Vladek to tell him about his experiences during the Holocaust in order to make them into a graphic novel, but in the process I think that Art is exposed to the raw horrors of what Vladek and other Jews went through. Art just wants to put it into a book, but listening to Vladek's stories, he's forced to recognize those traumas-- and since it involved his parents, kin, and other Jews, it seems like it would be hard for Art to be unaffected by all of that. It may not seem this way at first, but one could even attribute Art's tense relationship with Vladek as an indirect result of Vladek's experiences. Vladek is still in the survival mindset that he was during the Holocaust, and all of the knitpicky things he would do to survive are just unnecessary and annoying to those around him now.
For me, at least, the graphic novel format was FAR more effective at conveying the story of the Holocaust than any historical text that I've read. For one, it's a very personal account. Much like The Diary of A Young Girl (Anne Frank's diary), this is (for the most part) one person's account. What sets it apart further and makes it better in my opinion is that the drawings can convey much more than words alone can. The drawings create a world to relate to. They can depict horrible things like piles of dead bodies, children being swung into brick walls, and get the message across without being straight up gore. Characters are more easily identifiable by the type of animals that they're drawn as. All of these things make the story more accessible, more approachable, and more understandable. And that's not always easy to do when the audience is from a completely different time and maybe weren't direct witnesses or even alive during the time period of it's events.
Patrick, I agree with you about the story being more engaging as a graphic novel. But I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a second and ask if you would agree that by being more honest in his depiction of the story, Arthur would have honored the story’s solemnity better? What would the readers experience be if Arthur had chosen instead to use people instead of animals? Lets take it a step even farther and speculate the effect using actual pictures from the Holocaust would have had on the reader? I appreciate the graphic novel and his choice to use animals, I really do, but I wish he would have included more actual pictures like the one of his father in the prison uniform in the back of the book.
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