Essay: Ethics of Survivor Treatment in Post-Holocaust American Literature
In the latter half of the twentieth century, several Jewish American writers have taken on the task of representing the Holocaust and its victims in their art. Even though Isaac Bashevis Singer, Art Spiegelman and Cynthia Ozick are did not experience the Holocaust themselves, several of their works center on this sensitive issue. Through their short story, graphic novel and novella they explore the difficulty of writing about a topic that is for them as American Jews both near and distant, and raise issues regarding American society's treatment of Holocaust victims. Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus embodies the artist's struggle with depiction of the Holocaust on several levels. First, such a struggle is inherent the narrative's very form. For the depiction of a Holocaust story, Spiegelman chose the graphic novel, a medium he associates himself in the novel with the lighthearted fun of Walt Disney's cartoons (in a conversation with Vladek). Even though the su...