Despite the inescapability of the failure of words—since in their utterance is both representation and replacement, which create insurmountable distance between the atrocity and us--literature remains a likely space to forge an appropriate response to the Holocaust and other collective tragedies. In class, we discussed looking at Fugitive Pieces as a literary text that demonstrates how to utilize representational modes in a way that reveals their shortcomings without sacrificing the eloquence and lyrical components that draw us to literature. In the first part of the novel, Jakob's narrative, we encounter a response to trauma that is gripping despite--or perhaps because of--the narrator's inability to access the specific details of the traumatic experience.
In the second part of the novel, Ben's narrative, we witness another narrator's inability to access the details of the traumatic experience. The difference, however, is that Ben is not a survivor of the Holocaust; he is a child of survivors, which means that he is essentially trying to access someone else's trauma and claim it as his own. Although the details of "the event" remain just out of reach for both Jakob and Ben, they each confront it in a vastly different way.
What are some of the differences you see in the two narratives? How do you account for them? What do you make of them? What might these differences tell us about the ethics of representation?
Upon first glance, the major difference between Jakob's narrative and Ben's narrative is who the speaker is addressing. Jakob, speaking to a general audience, recounts the events of his life following his family's murder and his escape, while avoiding the event itself. Ben's narrative is almost a response to Jakob's words, directly addressing Jakob in several instances. Because he does not live through the events of the Holocaust himself, his connection to his parents allows him to only vaguely identify with the tragedies. By speaking to, or through Jakob, he is able to bring himself closer to this event that effects his whole life but that he can never connect directly with. Jakob speaks his story directly and Ben speaks his story through Jakob. By doing so, Anne Michaels attempts to follow the ethics of representation, making the distance from the event of each speaker clear at all times. This allows for a different reading of each narrative account, where readers are always aware of the difference between the two characters due to the overlapping between them.
ReplyDeleteJakob and Athos constantly research the event and history of this traumatic experience, and it is ever present in his narrative however inaccessible his own experiences may be. In Ben's family, they never speak at length or in detail about the family's history in the Holocaust, which creates a divide between Ben and the truth of his family's history, which he pieces together little by little through the always present silence. Ben says: "there is no energy of a narrative in my family, not even the fervour of an elegy. Instead, our words drifted away, as if our home were open to the elements and we were forever whispering into a strong wind" (204). While his father does share some information of his personal history, he relays more fact than feeling, keeping the past at a distance far enough removed from emotion. The silence that pervades Ben's family only makes the past louder and more apparent in their everyday lives. Here, no words are even spoken to connect with trauma, and are thus rendered ineffective. For Jakob, words are spoken and read to excess, yet can still not truly access the event. In either case, words only go so far.
Both of their lives are shaped by this event of trauma that neither can directly link with. Jakob cannot access the memories of the events although he lived them directly. Ben cannot access the event of trauma because of the obstacle of a generation, although this trauma still affected his whole life through his parents' behaviors.
Sarah Wissel
Of all differences between Jakob's and Ben's narratives, what most called my attention was the manifestation of
ReplyDeletetrauma in a way that seems to be directly oppositive to their relation with the actual events of the Holocaust.
Let me try to make myself clear:
Jakob experienced the war himself. His family was slaughtered right in front of him, and along with them everything else
that he knew, that was part of him, was taken away at once, leaving him without nothing but the sympathy of a stranger.
Ben never lived the holocaust. He grew up in a phisicaly safe post war environment (we cannot say that the environment
he grew up in was psychologically safe, or sound), in a peaceful country, having his family always by his side.
Nevertheless, the objective manifestations of trauma are much more clearly present in Ben's narrative than in Jakob's.
Ben describes the trauma of starvation when he is forced to eat a rotten apple; he walks long distances alone at night
as if preparing himself for a sequel of the horror; he lives surrounded by the traumatized behavior and overprotection
of his parents; he cannot take friends home, and even his childhood fantasies were filled with memories of menace:
"My adventures were always ingenious schemes to save my parents from enemies; spacemen who were soldiers" (p244).
Jakob's narrative on it's turn, despite the fact that he experienced the actual war, does not portrait such clear images
of trauma. We can see the effects of the shock in his actions and in his thoughts, obviously stronger than in Ben's,
yet not as clearly or directly depicted. Jakob's account of the dreadful events are more subtle although there are
no subtleties in the way he went through them.
Great insights, both of you!
ReplyDelete