What Is The Paradox Of The Instant Of My Death

In “The Instant of My Death,” Maurice Blanchot writes about his near-death encounter with Nazis in France in 1944. The narrative, a short but very insightful piece of literature, provides a personal testimony of a traumatic experience. It explains the conflicted emotions the survivor experiences when he escapes death as he comes to terms with how own existence. Blanchot reveals a paradox in the text and explains it to be when the speaker realizes he is both alive and dead. This notion, living and breathing and still having a part of oneself killed, also appears in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel series Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Spiegelman’s narrative uses illustrations to describe his father’s near-death experiences as he tries to escape from the Nazis, providing a very unique presentation of the atrocities Jewish residents experienced at the hands of German Nazis. Both Blanchot and Spiegelman address the traumatic events of the Shoah and the emotions associated with people who experience close encounters with death. In this essay, I will address how Blanchot and Spiegelman address survival, coping, and death into their stories.

“The Instant of My Death” …show more content…
The story provides Blanchot’s coping and reflection as he comes to terms with his “dead” former self as a result of almost being assassinated. Blanchot presents a personal account that is told as if it could happen, or did happen, to someone else. Jack Trotter explains, “To write, Blanchot argues, is no longer to think of death as something awaiting us in the future but to think of it as that which has always already happened.” In other words, Blanchot acknowledges his death and the traumatic memories that still exist as he tries to live in the