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Melanie BrusselerProfessor Christopher ReedEnglish 300M Artists and AuthorsMay 6, 2015The Escapist and Mauswitz: graphic representation of the Holocaust The scale of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany against the Jews and other minority groups of Europe made the Holocaust the most destructive incident of genocide in recorded history. In the wake of the Holocaust, or the Shoa, survivors wrote of their experiences, calling for their readers to bear witness to the systematic horrors to which they had been subjected, laying the foundation for Holocaust representation in literature. For a generation after the Holocaust, Jewish authors represented the Holocaust in their work in an act of refusal to let history forget the genocide, for, as Alan Berger notes, forgetting is the ultimate form of Holocaust denial, (88). This approach to Holocaust representation proves problematic to subsequent generations of Jewish-American authors, who did not witness the genocide, but who, as Stanislav Kolar argues, have inherited the trauma of their ancestors (228). Though these generations did not experience the Holocaust, Kolar argues, the cataclysmic wartime experiences across generations has formed a significant part of the identity of the children of survivors, which is defined by the survivors guilt they feel for having not experienced the trauma of earlier generations. Two such non-witnessing Jewish-Americans authors Michael Chabon and Art Spiegelman address the centrality of the Holocaust to Jewish-American identity and their role in maintaining the Holocausts legacy in literature as members of non-witnessing generations through a focus on expressing their survivors guilt in the graphic narrative form. In 1992 Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize, with a special citation, for his non-fiction graphic novel Maus. When Maus was serialized throughout the 1980s it changed critical and commercial perceptions about comic books or graphic novels as a literary form. David Hajdu, in a New York Times book review of Spiegelmans In the Shadow of No Towers, argues that comic books had for much of its history been widely dismissed as insubstantial and disreputable. ''Maus'' and its Pulitzer elevated comics in the public eye, much as they lifted Spiegelman out of the realm of mere comic-book people and up a few tiers in the cultural hierarchy to the sphere of serious, respected authors and artists (1). Maus was the first work to present the power of images in depicting narratives, especially in Holocaust representation. W.J.T Mitchell contends that in traditional modes of textuality the image, the space of reference, projection or formal patterning, cannot literally came into view, which creates a figurative pressure for the author to conjure the image for the reader (157). Spiegelman in Maus illustrates the inherent visual power the graphic novel has to bring the horrors of the Holocaust not just into consciousness, but also into view. Since Mauss publication, the graphic novel has moved into cultural prominence, which has led subsequent Jewish-American authors to use the form, or depict it in their work. Chabon, in his novel about graphic novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, depicts the creation of graphic novels to suggest that escapism is an appropriate response for a non-witnessing Jew (Berger, 81). Chabons treatment of the Holocaust in his work reflects the generational distance from the Holocaust that Spiegelman expresses in Maus, in which he illustrates that his generation can bear witness to the testimony of other peoples horrifying experiences, but cannot bear visual witness to these horrors (Berger 81). In his The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon presents Josef Kavalier as a character who escapes from the turbulence of his native Europe into the panels and pages of the comic books he illustrates. Berger notes that Kavalier takes on the role of the survivor prevalent in Holocaust literature, even though he is a refugee who does not have first-hand experience of the camps(81). Berger further argues that Chabon purposely avoids encountering the Shoah to present escapism as a response to the Holocaust (81). Certainly the theme of escapism is inescapable throughout the novel. The plot of the novel centers on the amateur escape artist Josef Kavaliers flight from Nazi occupied Europe to the U.S, where he changes his name to the American-ized Joe and creates a comic series that focuses on the Escapists fight against the Axis powers. As Joe contemplates the sense of loss and guilt he feels for having survived or escaped the Holocaust, he concludes that comic books he creates offer an escape from his harsh reality:Having lost his mother, father, brother, and grandfather, the friends and foes of his youth, his beloved teacher Bernard Kornblum, his city, his historyhis homethe usual charge leveled against comic books that they offered merely an easy escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf. He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags and creates, from handcuffs and shackles, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death. The escape from reality was, he feltespecially right after the wara worthy challenge (575). Berger argues that Chabons use of escapism in the novel serves to acknowledge both the bond and the barrier existing between Jews on the American and European sides of the Atlantic, but concludes that by focusing on Joes escape from Europe and his life in America, Chabon generalizes the Shoah so that Europe's murdered Jews are a nameless and anonymous group whose memory may, or may not, be for a blessing. (87-88). Bergers analysis gives short shift to the meaning that Chabon imparts to the process of escape, especially the escape from reality that comics offer. Chabon makes clear that the act of escape is not significant in and of itself, but gains meaning only as process of transformation. At several points in the novel Joe reminds himself of his former tutor Kornblums advice to never worry about what you are escaping from, he said. Reserve your anxieties for what you are escaping to(37). The escapism so prevalent in the novel is not an escape from the Holocaust, or a suggestion to forget the event, but is the process through which Joe comes to terms with the loss of his family to the Holocaust, as a non-witnessing survivor of the genocide. Throughout the novel Chabon highlights the artistic process as a means for Joe and for humanity to come to terms with the Holocaust, as Joe uses the medium of graphic novels or comic books to express and understand his survivors guilt. Chabon presents Joe as an emotionally reserved character, disinclined to express his feelings verbally or textually. Through the process of illustration however, Joe is able to express his emotions in a purely visual manner. Upon completing a sprawling graphic novel about the Golem of Praguea figure in Jewish mythologythe novel suggests that Joes absorption with his project helped him to come to terms with his survival: Joe came to feel that the work telling this storywas helping to heal him. All the grief and black wonder that we was never able to express, before or afterward, not to a navy psychiatrist, nor to a fellow drifter in some cheap hotel near Orlando, Florida, nor to his son, nor to any of those few who remained to love him when he finally returned to the world, all of it went into the queasy angles and stark compositions, the cross hatchings and vast swaths of shadow, the distended and fractured and finely minced panels of his monstrous comic book. (577-578).While Joe does not witness the Holocaust, or bear witness to someone elses experience, he is able to express his survivors guilt through this process of creating visual testimony of Jewish culture. Though Chabon focuses on Joes individual production of the Golem of Prague, his description presents graphic novels with their inextricable braiding of image and narrative as new modes for representing the Holocaust in literature (562). While The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is not a graphic novel, Chabon provides ekphrastic descriptions of the comics that Joe creates, allowing for the reader to clearly visualize the images Joe illustrates. Chabon describes the composition of Joes first comic book cover as natural and simple and modern; the two figures had weight and mass; the foreshadowing of Hitlers outflyig body was daring and a little off but in a way that was somehow convincing. The draping of the clothes was right; the Escapists uniform looked like a uniform, like jersey cloth bunched in places but tight-fitting, and not merely blue-colored flesh, bringing this central figure of the Escapist to life through words alone (159). As the novel progresses the work that Joe produces becomes more visually complex, and Joe finds that the more of himself, of his heart and his sorrows, that he pored into the strip the more convincingly he demonstrated the power of the comic book as a vehicle of personal expression(579). Here Chabon promotes the potential the graphic narrative form lends to storytellers, and suggests that the braiding of image and narrative that defines graphic novels as a medium offers Joe a way to share his specific experience as a non-witnessing Jew. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a Holocaust novel that is not about the Holocaust. Joe Kavaliers preoccupation with escaping the horrors awaiting the Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Europe and later escaping the guilt he feels for having survived when his family did not, illustrates the centrality of the Holocaust to Jewish and Jewish American identity while also acknowledging the distance that those who did not themselves bear witness to the event feel from it. Chabon sets the novel during the Holocaust, but does not feature any real descriptions of the atrocities. Berger argues that though embedding he Holocaust in a broader narrative is one way to ensure that readers are reminded of the Jewish catastrophe, he still finds it problematic for Chabon to advocate escapism at a time when everything is known (81). However, the novel illustrates how such an approachcreating new representations of the Holocaustis appropriate for those who did not know or witness the Holocaust themselves. Berger, in his analysis of the theme of escapism in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay directly compares Chabons work to Art Spiegelmans Maus, claiming that unlike Art Spiegelman's Maus volumes, which use the comic format to bear witness to the real story of his father's Holocaust experience, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay avoids encountering the Shoah (80). But, this analysis of Maus fails to examine the relationship between the text and image in, which often express different ideas across the pages of Spiegelmans seminal work. Though Spiegelman does bear witness to his father Vladek Spiegelmans experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz, the tension in the non-fiction graphic novel is in Spiegelmans attempts to understand the horrors his father lived through, which he himself did not witness. Spiegelman juxtaposes, and combines images with text to express his feeling of having inherited the trauma of the Holocaust, and illustrate his inability to every truly witness it. Spiegelmans format of text interwoven with images, Hillary Chute notes, allows him to spatially juxtapose (and overlay) past and present and future moments on the page (453). The narrative follows Spiegelmans conversations with his father Vladek in which his father describes his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. Throughout Muas, Spiegelman expresses his guilt for having not lived through the Holocaust like his parents. Spiegleman says to his wife Francoise that I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through!...I guess its some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did (176). During frames or passages of the narrative in which Art is narrating his own thoughts, he presents his conflictions with bearing witness to his fathers experience in the death camp, when he cannot fully fathom it himself. I mean I cant even make any sense of my relationship with my fatherHow am I supposed to make any sense of Auschwitz? Of the Holocaust (174). While Spiegelman notes these internal conflicts textually throughout Maus, he also presents them visually. Jerome McGann notes in his Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism, that the special features of the page are resources for poetic effects, which Spiegelman expresses an understanding of through the layout of his narrative frames. Each frame of the narrative present different moments, both in Vladeks past and Arties present, and each frame stands by itself, Lisa Costello notes, indicating that the story itself seems fragmented to Artie (35). The way that Spiegelman formats the frames of each page expresses more of his emotions throughout the narrative than the actual text. Often Vladeks past bleeds into Arties present, Costello argues, which forms visual contrasts between the textual present. For example, the first several frames of the chapter titled Auchwitz (Time Flies) Spiegelman discusses his present, in which he has received commercial and critical acclaim for the publication of the first volume of Maus, yet the images show him at his work bench above a mound of corpses, with flies flittering around him, visually evoking the lack of closure he feels (image 1). The bleeding together of past and present through the ink on the page, and the juxtaposition of the text and image in Spiegelmans work illustrates how he has inherited the trauma of the Holocausta sentiment he cannot verbally express. Though Maus expresses how central the Holocaust is to Spiegelmans relationship to his family and to his identity, he goes to great lengths to visually express the distance he feels from the event. Though the text of Maus speaks of humans and humanity, Spiegelman illustrates Jews as mice, ethnic Polish as pigs, and Nazis as cats, which Kollar argues represents an artistic choice Spiegelman made to express his generational distance from events of which he has no firsthand experience and avoid a total identification with the Holocaust and hence to forestall the ethically unacceptable appropriate of an event he has not lived through, (229). Spiegelmans use of surrealist imagery marks the inherent power of the visual in Holocaust representation. While Spiegelman cannot express a distance from the event through text, which for most of the narrative consists of his fathers testimony, he is able to do so visually. Moreover, Spiegelmans use of surrealist imagery reflects the fact that the images he presents are not actually bearing witness to his fathers testimony. The words the Vladek uses to describe his story are transcribed in the text, yet Spiegelman is aware that he cannot himself see what his father saw. As Jeanne Ewart argues: Spiegelman himself stresses here the problematic status of a visual narrative at one remove from autobiography. Vladek knew what the camps looked like. His account assumes knowledge that Spiegelman doesnt have; the sons position in the narrative is of an audience trying to see the story told to him, as much as his reader will (92). Spiegelman thus avoids trying to create realistic visual depictions of the death camps, for as Fry notes, before they have in any real sense seen a picture, people are calling to mind their memories of objects similar to those which they see represented, and are measuring the picture by these (101). Because Spiegelman cannot make visually present the images that his father has witnessed, he turns away from a conventional illustration of text, which Max Jacob argues acts as a pictorial signifier for a signified idea conveyed by a text, and instead reimagines his fathers experiences in a way he can visualize (58). Though Spiegelan could have beared witness to his fathers experience through text alone, it is through the juxtaposition of the image and text that expresses his generational distance from the event. In Maus, Spiegelman tells his pscychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, that no matter what I accomplish, it doesnt seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz to which his therapist replies but you werent in Auschwitzyou were in Rego Park (204). Chabon and Spiegelman each examine this sentimentthat the Holocaust continues to haunt further generations of Jews who did not live through the eventby bringing the visual to the forefront of Holocaust representation in literature. Chabon in his novel about graphic novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay presents the form of visual narrative as an escape from reality, and the process of creating graphic novels as a means for non-witnessing generations of Jews to come to terms with the trauma they have inherited. Spiegelman uses the juxtaposition of image with text to express his trauma and inability to understand the Holocaust the way a survivor would. Though the two novels are different in form, they both illustrate the power of images to express feelings trauma in Holocaust representation, without presenting straightforward witness accounts of the event.

Works CitedBerger, Alan. "Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: The Return of the Golem."Studies in American Jewish Literature29 (2010): n. pag. Web.Chabon, Michael.The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2000. Print.Chute, Hillary. "Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative."PMLA123.2 (2008): 452-65. Web.Costello, Lisa. "History and Memory in a Dialogic of 'Performative Memorialization' in Art Spiegelman's 'Maus: A Survivor's Tale'"Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association39.2 (2006): 22-42. Web.Ewart, Jeanne. "Reading Visual Narrative: Art Spiegelman's Maus."Narrative8.1 (2000): 87-103. Web.Fry, Roger, and Christopher Reed.A Roger Fry Reader. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1996. Print.Hajdu, David. "Homeland Insecurity." The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2004. Web. 06 May 2015.Jacob, Max and Fisher, Susan Greenberg, and Mary Ann. Caws. Picasso and the Allure of Language. New Haven, CT: Yale U Art Gallery, 2009. Print.Kolar, Stanislav. "Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma In Spiegelman's Maus."Brno Studies in English39.1 (2013): 227-241. Web.McGann, Jerome J.Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.Mitchell, W. J. T.Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1994. Print.Oware, Matthew. "A "Man's Woman"? Contradictory Messages in the Songs of Female Rappers, 1992-2000."Journal of Black Studies39.5 (n.d.): 786-802. Web.Smitherman, Geneva.Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Print.Spiegelman, Art, and Art9ik9990[ Spiegelman.Maus. London: Penguin, 1992. Print.

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Spiegelman 202.