Comparison Between Maus And Franz Kafka’S Work

Comparison between Maus and Franz Kafka’s work

Introduction.

This monograph will be a comparative work between the novel The process written by Franz Kafka and the graphic novel Mous: a survivor story written by Art Spiegelman. Both works exhibit an endless martyrdom and this monograph will be analyzed how this is represented. In the novel written by Kafka, the main character, K, is subject to a process that does not understand why he began or when he will end, which leads him to look for an exit throughout the novel. 

On the other hand, Mous, represents the situation that the Jews lived in the Holocaust through the history of their father represented in black and white drawings, which show the suffering and uncertainty that the victims experienced by not knowing when he went tofinish that nightmare they were going through;

Developing.

The Holocaust was a period in the history of the world in which millions of Jews were persecuted and killed because of their origins by the German Nazis, directed by Adolf Hitler. Since the end of World War II there was a great debate about the way that the Holocaust should represent, known as the epitome of contemporary historical tragedy. The big problem that prevailed was whether it was ethical to do it, and in the event that it was, if the tradition of oral narratives were enough to describe horror and tragedy. 

A remarkable work is the graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, especially because the author decided to tell the story through a minor genre: the comic, using his language (visual and verbal) but adding elevated cultural elements.

Addressing the holocaust through comic is something innovative since they are generally linked to fantastic stories but in this case it is dealing with the most serious theme of the twentieth century with a strong documentary character. The endless martyrdom in the graphic novel. 

The holocaust represents horror, pain and tragedy among many other words, and for those Jews who lived the events in their own flesh, these feelings were constant without knowing when it would end. This is an element that is repeatedly in Spiegelman’s work. In this monograph I will analyze how you can represent endless martyrdom in the graphic novel. The holocaust represents horror, pain and tragedy among many other words, and for those Jews who lived the events in their own flesh, these feelings were constant without knowing when it would end. 

This is an element that is repeatedly in Spiegelman’s work. In this monograph I will analyze how you can represent endless martyrdom in the graphic novel. The holocaust represents horror, pain and tragedy among many other words, and for those Jews who lived the events in their own flesh, these feelings were constant without knowing when it would end. This is an element that is repeatedly in Spiegelman’s work.

One of the first examples of the uncertainty that can be found is in chapter three of volume I "War prisoner" in 1939 when the war broke out. In this part of the comic you can see a figure in Vladek’s dream that said “Salds from here free the day that Parshas Truma. Parshas Truma, a fragment that is added to the Torah, would happen only in three months I fear that we will never leave here. However, they went up to a train and thought that everything had ended, but the reality is that everything was just beginning.

Those people who were trapped in the concentration camps did not know what day, if it would ever arrive, their freedom. A distinctive feature that must be emphasized is that within the concentration fields, the agony and despair caused by the uncertainty of not knowing when all that tragedy was going to end and returning with your family, changed to despair and wait for its inevitable ending- Death, slow and painful. 

No one knew when his turn would arrive, it could be that same day, tomorrow or next week. But the life expectancy that one day lived in the hearts of the Jews was lost and all they tried was to survive the day to day with the arduous works to which they were subjected. This can be clearly identified in Chapter 2 "Time flies" of Volume II, "Listen. They will kill us all. To you this week the next.

The process is the work written by Franz Kafka in 1914. All starts one morning when the main character, Josef K, is arrested by two men who wake him up to tell him that process that will develop throughout the novel. From here the endless martyrdom begins that this character will live when undergoing a process for a reason that he himself does not know and two situations are installed;contingency and waiting. I deduce it because I have been accused, but I can’t find any fault for which I could have accused.  

The main questions are: Who has accused me? What organism process my process? Are you official? None has uniform. This novel could be characterized by a structure that assimilates and reflects the infinite form or a maze without exit;Go around but you don’t get anywhere. The character constantly seeks an exit of that absurd process to which he was subjected against his will;He is imprisoned in an endless situation that is not a solution. Each circumstance that is narrated would seem to K further from escaping, walking through the same steps without reaching absolutely nothing. 

Also, this novel criticizes the bureaucracy, in this case, its excess. Behind all this "order" and organization "deeply rational, with all its hierarchies and procedures, with its precise rules, fixed schedules and assigned places, it is revealed in reality as something absurd. Once immersed in that nightmare of the judicial bureaucracy that lurried until the end of their days, he meets other people who were going through a similar situation with the same deep desire to escape. –My process – the merchant continued – – did not progress, investigations were carried out, I was present in all, I gathered material, I presented all my accounting books before the court, which, as I found later, had not been necessary.

However, it is important to highlight two issues that are narrated. The first exit offered to the character is by Titorelli, a painter who works as a court portrait. Although this figure offers more concrete and broad information about your situation, this only accentuates the feeling of K that the duration of the process is incalculable and can become eternal. Throughout the process, the desperate search for the character of doors and openings that can provide air or openings that can illuminate that dark and opaque environment in which it is located.

Another situation that occurs in the novel is his encounter with the priest. After a string of several events that assimilate an endless maze, this character appears in which K deposits his issues to solve. However, like all the circumstances that arise in this novel, he does not obtain the concrete answer he was looking for. The priest only warns him about deception in relation to the law “not how the process could be influenced, but how the process could be left. That possibility had to exist, K had thought a lot about her in recent times. 

The endless martyrdom presented in the process is revealed as a criticism of society and the implementation of rules that triggers in the absolutely absurd. They intimid a society that leads innocent citizens to consider guilty due to an endless bureaucracy, those wealthy forces which dominate the lives of citizens. The novel focuses on the search for departure and clarifies how to become free from bureaucratic, judicial and capitalist devices. The only way to give an account of the actions itself is with one’s life;The relationship between law and writing.

A common point that can be found in both works is that this endless martyrd. At the moment that the characters are bound in illusion that the nightmare they were going through would end, is where it is the beginning of their end. In Maus this occurs in the last chapter in which they are taken to the train and they think that everything had finally ended, but this could not be further from the truth. Once they arrive at their destinations, after several days of a horrifying journey, the passengers face a completely abysmal situation they longed for. Everything was crying and prayers. We had survived and now we expected them to shoot because we couldn’t do anything else.

In comparison, in the novel the process tells the moment in which two gentlemen who came in the name of justice are presented in the house of the main character and take it against their will. However, unfortunately, the mere hope that was born in K that this meant that the process would finally come to an end was just an illusion. In the beginning they express to K that he had to commit suicide but then one of the two lords kills him. Unlike Mous the main character in the process dies, however, the fact that has been the end of the character does not mean that it is understood what really happened. The course of his nightmare ends without really solving leaving unfinished, even for the character,

In the process the endless martyrdom ends with the death of K, however, as I explained above, this process was unfinished by not knowing specifically whether he was guilty or not. On the other hand, in Maus Vladek manages to survive thus ending that suffering. Despite this, the consequences after this tragedy shows us that although physical suffering is over, the mental still remains in the survivors. An example close to the author is the suicide of his own mother, Anja Spiegelman, on which Art publishes prisoner on the planet hell. 

A clinical case telling his death. Despite surviving one of the greatest tragedies in history, that mental torture atosige it even outside the concentration fields to the point of making the decision to take their lives. Another example close to the author is from the father, on which he tells the story, Vladek Spiegelman. The comic shows the evolution of the personality of the father who is remodeled from the experiences that he lives. Several psychological studies show that survivors, due to traumatic experience and the daily struggle to survive, experienced a decay in their cognitive thinking skills, causing depression, anxiety, PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) among other diseases.

conclusion.

In conclusion, both novels present the endless martyrdom in the way that the main characters are undergoing a situation governed by uncertainty, waiting and pain, in which their end is not specified: they live the day to day without knowing when that tragedy was goingFinally conclude. In the process the suffering ends with death, but the graphic novel Mous presents another perspective;Despite having survived martyrdom, this did not mean, seeing this represented in psychological disorders and the great obstacle that the survivors of the holocaust must be raffled daily and in some cases such as ending their own mother, they resort to death for thatpain.