One of the themes examined in the previous essay on MAUS was the effect that Valdek's experiences have had on his life and on Art's life. The past has greatly influenced Valdek, and Art's need to understand the past that is now effecting him is protrayed in his conversations with Valdek. A good deal of MAUS is devoted to the relationship between Art and his father. The reader senses frustration on the part of Art because he cannot relate to the stories that Valdek tells him, but there is also a frustration felt from Valdek because he cannot make Art understand.
Understanding may, however, not be the key. Knowledge seems to be more important than actual understanding. Having knowledge of the past allows people and places long gone to live on in memories. This is one of the things that most Holocaust survivorstry to do by telling their stories. As Art Speigelman said about the stories of those who experienced the holocaust,
How people tell the past is a theme that is predominant in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Morrison examines the idea of speaking the unspeakable in detail in her novel. Sethe is consumed by the past and her memories for most of the novel. However, her past experiences do not only effect her, they are woven into the lives of everyone around her. This idea is evident not only in Beloved, but also in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. Community and the notion that one person's life has an effect on countless others is central to both of these novels.
In Ceremony, Silko writes, "The old man only made him certain of something that he had feared all along, something in the old stories. It only took one person to tear away the delicate strands of the web, spilling the rays of suninto the sand, and the fragile world would be injured. Once there had been a man who cursed the rain clouds, a man of monstrous dreams." (p.38-39) This passage relates to the guilt that Tayo feels. He believes that Josiah and Rocky died because he coul not help them. He is guilty that he is a half-breed. All of the stories of Tayo's family are woven together like a web, and then woven further into the web of the world. No stories can have meaning by itself and each stories gives meaning to countless others. This idea can be seen in Alexandra Reck's web essay on Ceremony. In the first line she states, "In the English language and Western society in general, the concept of a story is vastly different than in the Native American culture. For Native Americans, a story is an intricate part of a web that cradles all the past, present and future events, ceremonies, beliefs and traditions of their culture. Each story is part of another story which is linked yet to another one, and all these stories are connected back to the very origin of creation.
Time, in Native American terms, is not linear but circular. As Silko describes in her essay A Pueblo Indian Perspective, what is essential '...is the sense of story, and story within story, and the idea that one story is only the beginning of many stories, and the sense that stories never truly end.' Time and stories, history and life are all tied together. Time is like a ring, a neverending circle"
Here Reck introduces the idea that time is circular. Silko's idea is that because time is not linear, events that happened fifty years ago, but were very important, are closer to the present than events that happened just an hour ago, but had lttle effect on life. Because people can learn from stories, they effect everyone. If people hear the stories, they can learn from the experiences of others and avoid making the same mistakes.
"The Meaning of Time and Memory"
Time being circular also means that events that happen can effect people who are not there and did not experience them. This is what happened to Art in MAUS. Art did not live through the holocaust, but through his father, he too has been effected. In her web essay "The Memories of Time", Grace Slattery examines the idea that nothing ever dies if some one holds on to a memory of it. "When a day passes, it seems as though it will never return. When a person dies, it is easy to consider that person gone. However, since time does not exist in a linear fashion in the mind, nothing ever dies if there remains a memory of it. Tayo, in Ceremony, is told that, 'as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of the story we have together"' (Silko 231).
The concept that nothing dies if someone holds on to it, is a central theme in Beloved. Sethe holds on to all of her memories, and has to spend each day, "beating back the past."(p.73) Thus, she tells her daughter, Denver, that, "'I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget, other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. ....I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there."(p.35) Sethe goes on to tell Denver that others can see these rememories as well, and that they can experience the same things when they pass through the places where events occurred. Sethe warns Denver that she can never go to Sweet home because, "The picture is still there and what's more, if you go there-you who was never there- if you go thereand stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over- over and done with - it's going to always be there waiting for you.'"(36)
This idea in Beloved is carried on in many of the writings on children of survivors. The next generation seems to find that they cannot truly understand what their parents experienced until they visited the places they had been. M.R. on the Atomic Memories website, seems to confirm this idea when he speaks of his relation to the atomic bomb. MR says that he always felt distant from the events that his parents had lived through. Then, he saw a very detailed graphic movie and visited Hiroshima. For him, ththese things brought him closer to understanding the horror his parnents had lived through than their stories could. In his own way he was experiencing part of what they had gone through. Going through some of it himself took away some of the frustration that he felt at not being able to understand.
For Art Spegielman and MAUS, this problem of not quite understanding his father's accounts was a frustration as well. "Yet, the "unknowableness" remains a problem: 'It's becoming harder and harder as I go on in the book. For instance, the stuff in the camps that I'm working on now is very, very difficult because I just can't get a clear sense of movement through Auschwitz. None of the accounts are sufficient to let me feel that.'" Art also went to visit Auschwitz and the hometown of his father. This not only helped him to visualize the places he needed to draw in his book, it also helped him to understand the experiences his father had. For, as Denver states in Beloved,
"'If it's still there waiting, that must mean nothing ever dies."
Sethe looked right in Denver's face. 'Nothing ever does she said."'(p.36)
The key to knowing the past, and possibly coming to understand it, is learning the stories. For many survivors it is difficult, if not impossible to retell their stories. Often they run across the same frustration that Valdek did when talking to Art.
Although Art is frustrated that he cannot understand what Valdek is telling him, Valdek too must be frustrated that he cannot tell the story in a way that can make Art see what he is talking about. nonetheless, he is wise enough to know that there are things so horrific, that those who did not live through them have difficulty understanding them. Still, survivors do tell their stories, and they, and those around them, can reap the benefits.
The way in which people speak about unspeakable things is are interesting topic that is also covered in Beloved. Denver and Beloved constantly ask to hear stories, in an attempt to understand their past. Sethe, as most survivors do, needs to be encouraged to tell the stories. She offeres little on her own, and seems to only talk about the old days with Paul D for he can understand what she is talking about. Even then, it is difficult for her to open up the space inside herself where she keeps all of her memories.
John McGowan mentions the idea of speaking the unspeakable in his hypertext essay entitled "A Generation Removed?". "A related problem and experience is the difficulty of getting parent's to share the events. Mark Melnik writes ,'I learned very little from my parents until adulthood. I heard only snippets and vague statements about "the evil out there." At around age 30, I began to ask specific factual questions and, lo and behold, I learned more in the next seven years than I had in my entire life before then.' We see an example of the unspoken presence of the Holocaust as a force dominating children's experiences. Even though his parents never made a central issue of their experience, Mark was still very aware of the impact and the power of the Holocaust as a child. Even when parents don't try, they can not avoid having their children's lives dominated by the past."
In Beloved, Denver always wants to hear stories about herself. This is her way of understanding who she is and where she came from. the following passage is taken from an online essay about the novel Beloved. "The slave narratives are filled with stories where a child only truly knew what it meant to be a slave after receiving their first beating. When children did not experience the horrors for themselves, they usually came to understand them through their parents. However, the terror of the past was never openly discussed. As in Beloved, children like Denver learned of their parent's past through bits and piece. One survivor of the holocaust, Anne Levy, described how she remembered her parents talking only to each other about the past and very rarely to their children." One can see that the main way that children come to understand the past is through their parents and the older generation.
And so, ways of telling about the horrors of the holocaust and slavery, have come about through the survivors need to share, but not share too much and the next generation's need to understand. In beloved Sethe cannot simply pour out the stories of the past to Denver because that would defeat all the effort she puts into pushing them further and further inside herself. To lay them all out in front of her would be too overwhelming. In one scene where Sethe does talk with Paul D about the past, she has to struggle to contain the rage and fear that swells up inside her. It is always a part of her, but when she sits down and thinks about it, it almost become more than she can bear. "She shook her head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it refused No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept?...Just once could it say, No thank you? I just ate and I can't hold another bite? ...No thank you. I don't want to know or have to remeber that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love."(p.70) Thus, Sethe's story comes out bit by bit, just as other children of survivors have described their parents' stories coming out. The horrible things that these people lived though cannot come to the surface all at once the sharing, healing and understanding has to happen gradually.
To give this section of the paper a formal conclusion would not be fitting. The purpose here was to show how themes transcend literary and cultural barriers. A study such as this can have no true end. It can continue for as long as there are people willing to tell stories and others who are willing to listen. This section was to devoted to the understanding of how lives are intertwined, each life and story effecting the others. It is necessary for one generation to overcome the frustrations of dealing with another which may not seem to understand. However, there are ways, and unless people try to find them, the stories will die and with them will go the past that makes the present what it is today. This was just the beginning to what could be a long and exciting journey. This paper is linked to other websites and those sites are linked to countess more. By following these links to see where they lead, one can see the true impact of each person's story on another. Just as MAUS, Beloved and Ceremony can all be tied together through common themes, so can the lives and stories of the entire world.