In our recent unit relating to Jews during the Holocaust, we (essentially) read two books. Elie Wiesel's Night, and Maus by Art Spiegelman. These two books went along well together just as Restrepo also related to Fallen Angels, which focused on an earlier unit in our class.
Night, by Elie Wiesel, tells about his first hand experiences as a Jewish prisoner sent to several different labor camps in Auschwitz. Usually I don't like non-fiction that much, but this book blew me out of the water. I really enjoyed the style of writing Wiesel uses, along with the events and the story line of the book. I highly recommend this book to all classes. I loved it. This story about survival really illustrates how different beliefs and feelings can get you through a traumatic experience like the Holocaust. In Elie Wiesel's book, he says that at the beggining of his journey through the labor camps, he was trying to stay alive for his father's sake. It is here that love is a powerful thing and can get you through many hardships. Elie also states that many other prisoners were doing the same thing, staying alive for loved ones. There were also many other prisoners that were very religious and depended very heavily on their faith in Judaism to get them through their experience in Auschwitz. I think that a theme that is illustrated is that love and faith are powerful things, and help motivate you to achieve your goal, and in this case, that "goal" is survival.
Maus I and Maus II, both written by Art Spiegelman, are about his father Vladek's experiences in the concentration camps and his journey to freedom while evading execution by the Nazi's. From this is sounds very similar to the book night, both of them being about survival and freedom, but these two books are very different. Maus is written in comic book form, with illustrations and seperate pictures for each short scene. Also, the book is written symbolicly with animals representing different peoples, all of the Jew's are portrayed as mice, and the Nazi soliders as cats. There are even pigs and dogs too. I really enjoyed reading the two Maus books, primarily because they were an interesting story to go along with Wiesel's novel. Like Wiesel's novel, i also believe that a theme was that love and faith will help you through your hardest experiences. Vladeks main motivation for survival was his wife Anja, he loved her very much. I think that these two comic books were a great read to go along with our unit about WWII, and were also very interesting and appealed to me.
For our unit in guys lit, it was worth our time to read both the stories of Maus and Night because they go well together and portray similar themes. It was also nice to have somewhat of a visual aspect to the book, when we read Spiegelman's book, because it gives you less to imagine, besides the fact that the characters aren't actually mice. It went well in hand with the more graphic book, Night. It was really a cool process of reading both of the books, because one book gave you vivid details in text, and the other gave you a sketch of what the scene would look like. I think it is because each book complemented the other so well that a lot of the guys, including myself, liked reading these two books in succession. I highly recommend that people should read both of these books, instead of one or the other, because no matter which one you read first, it goes with the next one very well. I hope that students after me will have the privilege to read both of these books, because i thought they were both really great.
Nice job, Tyler
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