““[the Nazis] fear trouble,” whispered Juliek” (Night), before witnessing a hanging. ““I was frightened to go outside”” (Maus) admitted Vladek, after witnessing a hanging. Fear dictated all lives during the Second World War, though survivors of the Holocaust, Vladek Spiegelman and Eli Wiesel, have the courage to share their experiences through writing. Spiegelman’s story is illustrated and narrated by his son Art Spiegleman in the comic book Maus (1986-1991), while Wiesel recounts his own life as a fifteen year old in the concentration camps in his novel Night (1956). Though their stories differ, both emphasise the terror and hardship of living under Nazi control in their hanging scenes. The weight of these scenes is carried and shared with
…show more content…
Both contrast the lives of the condemned Jews with their hanging bodies, adding personal stories of the victims, reminding the readers of just how real this was. In Maus, this is done through contrasting captions and images. In the images we see the dangling, lifeless feet of Nahum Cohn, one of the Spiegelmans friends and business partners, whilst in the captions we are told about him as a person, how he was “just married”, and kind enough to give Vladek clothes without coupons. Meanwhile, in Night, this contrast is weaved into the paragraphs. There are multiple hangings written in this extract which follow the same structure so that we are told that somebody is going to die, then given some description of them alive and what their role was in the camp, before describing the procedure. In both stories we are only told about these people as they are about to die, because even if they had not had major roles in Vladek or Eli’s lives, they were known, and real people. This helps us understand the gravity of the hangings, despite them not being particularly close to loved ones. Though, unlike Maus, in this passage Wiesel adds numbers to his writing, using the repetition of “ten thousand caps” to show just how large the camps were, the fear that compelled them to raise their caps which cover
Both contrast the lives of the condemned Jews with their hanging bodies, adding personal stories of the victims, reminding the readers of just how real this was. In Maus, this is done through contrasting captions and images. In the images we see the dangling, lifeless feet of Nahum Cohn, one of the Spiegelmans friends and business partners, whilst in the captions we are told about him as a person, how he was “just married”, and kind enough to give Vladek clothes without coupons. Meanwhile, in Night, this contrast is weaved into the paragraphs. There are multiple hangings written in this extract which follow the same structure so that we are told that somebody is going to die, then given some description of them alive and what their role was in the camp, before describing the procedure. In both stories we are only told about these people as they are about to die, because even if they had not had major roles in Vladek or Eli’s lives, they were known, and real people. This helps us understand the gravity of the hangings, despite them not being particularly close to loved ones. Though, unlike Maus, in this passage Wiesel adds numbers to his writing, using the repetition of “ten thousand caps” to show just how large the camps were, the fear that compelled them to raise their caps which cover