Peanuts and Perseverance
Nut of the week: Peanuts
Peanuts are actually considered legumes which are plants with seed pods that split in half. They are used in peanut butter, chocolate candies, and an assortment of other foods.
The Holocaust is perhaps the worst tragedy in human history. Millions of innocent humans were killed for an unjust cause. It is a scar in history that will never fully heal.
Images of bodies and people who have been broken can only show us a glimpse of what living in constant fear would have been like. Articles and books tell us about scrounging for food and the exhausting manual labor, but we are still cannot begin to comprehend the horror of living during the Holocaust. However, Maus takes a different approach. Scott McCloud tells us that, "in comics at its best, words and pictures are like partners in a dance". By combining images and words into a graphic novel, Maus allows us to look a bit further into the tragedy. Maus uses the playful facade of the predator versus prey relationship of mice and cats to show us the events of the Holocaust in a less gruesome fashion. Jews are represented as mice, while the Nazis are represented as cats. In a sense, using animals in place of humans actually makes these events seem even worse. Imagining millions of humans having to face the cruelty of the Nazi regime is horrible. Maybe it's exactly what the author intended in the first place. To not only show us the pain and emotions, but also tell us of the struggle. Like mice scrounging for peanuts in a cupboard, only to be viciously killed in cold blood by a cat.
Peanuts are actually considered legumes which are plants with seed pods that split in half. They are used in peanut butter, chocolate candies, and an assortment of other foods.
The Holocaust is perhaps the worst tragedy in human history. Millions of innocent humans were killed for an unjust cause. It is a scar in history that will never fully heal.
Images of bodies and people who have been broken can only show us a glimpse of what living in constant fear would have been like. Articles and books tell us about scrounging for food and the exhausting manual labor, but we are still cannot begin to comprehend the horror of living during the Holocaust. However, Maus takes a different approach. Scott McCloud tells us that, "in comics at its best, words and pictures are like partners in a dance". By combining images and words into a graphic novel, Maus allows us to look a bit further into the tragedy. Maus uses the playful facade of the predator versus prey relationship of mice and cats to show us the events of the Holocaust in a less gruesome fashion. Jews are represented as mice, while the Nazis are represented as cats. In a sense, using animals in place of humans actually makes these events seem even worse. Imagining millions of humans having to face the cruelty of the Nazi regime is horrible. Maybe it's exactly what the author intended in the first place. To not only show us the pain and emotions, but also tell us of the struggle. Like mice scrounging for peanuts in a cupboard, only to be viciously killed in cold blood by a cat.
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