本文是一篇英语论文，笔者认为不同的叙事策略在某种程度上导致了犹太人大屠杀写作的繁荣和南京大屠杀写作的缺席。为了唤起后人承担起承载和传递历史记忆的责任，本文希望通过对两部灾难叙事的比较研究，为南京大屠杀叙事开辟一条新的道路。
Chapter One The Literary Writing of the Holocaust and NanjingMassacre
1.1 Writing Styles in Holocaust Literary Writings
In writing styles, Maus can be regarded as a semi-autobiographical writing and TheFlowers of War can be regarded as a semi-historical writing.
1.1.1 Maus: A Semi-autobiographical Literary Writing
From the definition of Oxford Languages, a “semi-autobiographical” writing (of awritten work) deals partly with the writer’s own life, partly with fictional elements. As one ofthe most famous graphic novels, Maus is depicted mostly with the writer’s own lifeexperiences but also contains fictional elements.
First, in the form of cartoons, Maus is more personal and revealing. Maus - A Survivor’sTale I My Father Bleeds History (1986) focuses on Vladek’s personal experiences duringWWII, while Maus - A Survivor’s Tale II And Here My Troubles Began (1992) is Art’s personal accounts of his representation of his father’s witness in the concentration camp. In1972, Spiegelman created a strip about racism in the Holocaust based partly on the anecdoteshe had heard about his father's Auschwitz experience. Later, Spiegelman recorded a series ofinterviews with his father. He learned more background information of Auschwitz experiences,which provided the basis of Maus. In this work, Spiegelman creates the character Vladek, aHolocaust survivor, who narrates the horrible history in personal perspective. Vladek’snarration is actually the embodiment of Art Spiegelman’s father’s personal experience as awitness. Spiegelman focuses not merely on the tragic life of the Jews in the Holocaust, but onthe psychological trauma the Holocaust brings to the second generation. In Maus, Spiegelmanalso talks the relationship between two generations. Grown up in America, Spiegelman hardlycomprehends his father’s temper and behavior, so he depicts a mean, nervous and tyrannicfather image. As the story goes on, when the bitter memory about his father's Auschwitzexperience unfolds, he gradually realizes that it is the Holocaust that hits hard his fatherphysically and mentally, making him unreasonable and impenetrable in some way.
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1.2 The Narratability in Holocaust Literary Writings
Immediately after the Holocaust, people were restrained to talk publicly about theHolocaust not only because “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (Adorno, 1977:30),but because there was no proper way to narrate this history. The whole world chooses toremain silent at the time of anti-human atrocities during WWII, but begins to condemn thesavage acts after the Nazis have been crushed. After the war, words are too pale and weak toretell the catastrophic memories of the Holocaust. Quite a lot of people believed the latecondemnations and reflections seemed meaningless since the tragedy already happened.
Later, many change their minds and argue that literary works should shoulder the task torepresent holocaust events. If not to write poetry after Auschwitz, forgetting the Holocaustwould become more barbaric for the whole human society. The famous writer and theHolocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said in the preface of his famous autobiographicalliterature work Night that “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time”(Wiesel, 2006:18). Holocaust literary writings in a way keep reminding people of the disastersand prevent people from forgetting about them. Besides, by recording, studying andinterpreting the transcripts and classical documents of holocaust events, those catastrophicmemories could by some means connect with daily life. Xue Chunxia points out thatHolocaust literary writings can “not only present historical memories, but also transmit themeanings of memories to the descendants and to the future by its interpretation ofliterariness”(2019:109). As holocaust events are narratable in literary writings, there still lies lots of difficulties in how to narrate them.
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Chapter Two The Narrative Strategies in Holocaust LiteraryWritings
2.1 Narrative Voice in Holocaust Literary Writings
Narrative voice is the perspective of a story telling. Genette points out the importantdistinction between “the question who sees” and “the question who speaks” (Genette,1980:186). He distinguishes the classifications of “mood” and “voice” and extends “voice” as“who is the narrator?” (Genette, 1980:186) According to the definition from Gerald Prince,“voice” is “the set of signs characterizing the narrator and, more generally, the narratinginstance, and governing the relations between narrating and narrative text as well as betweennarrating and narrated” (Prince, 2003:111). Susan Sniader Lanser combines others’ ideas tofurther discuss three modes of narrative voice from a feminist perspective: “authorial voice”,“personal voice” and “communal voice”. Based on these ideas, this chapter aims to analyzethe narrative voice in holocaust literary writings. Maus narrates the story in personal voiceand The Flowers of War narrates the story in communal voice.
2.1.1 Maus: Personal Voice in Narration
Maus adopts personal voice to tell the story. Lanser generalizes the term personal voiceas follows:
I use the term personal voice to refer to narrators who are self-consciouslytelling their own histories. I do not intend this term to designate all “homodiegetic”or “first-person” narratives—that is, all those in which the voice that speaks is aparticipant in the fictional world — but only those Genette calls “autodiegetic,” inwhich the “I” who tells the story is also the story’s protagonist (or an older version of the protagonist). (Lanser, 1992:18-19)
As the narrator who tells his own story in the first-person narration, Vladek uses a first personsingular “I”, to uncover his memory of the bitter changes of life under the historical impactduring WWII.
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2.2 Focalization in Holocaust Literary Writings
In Maus, the story is narrated in personal voice. Therefore, internal focalization could beapplied because the character reveals all the things he experienced from a personalperspective. The narrator basically equals the character. In The Flower of War, zero focalization fits because the narrator has an omniscient point of view in telling NanjingMassacre. The narrator tells more information than any character could observe.
2.2.1 Maus: Subjective Focus to Inspire Empathy
In Maus, internal focalization is taken as the main narrative mode. From Vladek’sperspective, the Holocaust is observed with Vladek’s personal ideology, whose minds areoften uncovered from time to time to reveal his life experience. With internal focalization,Vladek subjectively observes the whole historical events and makes his subjective judgmentsupon survival and death according to his experiences.
In Maus, Vladek’s reminiscence suggests him as an internal focaliser. The feature ofinternal focalization is that the focaliser strictly restricts the point of view. Only what thefocaliser sees, hears, thinks and does could be directly described in the work, while the eventswhich occur outside focalization could not be freely absorbed. One example of this internalfocalization is the way Vladek recalls his first encounter of death. When he saw a treeopposite the river moving, he “kept shooting and shooting until finally the tree stoppedmoving” even if he saw out of the tree “it held a hand to show it was hurt, to surrender”(Spiegelman,1986:48). Vladek subjectively makes up his mind to shoot the disguised enemywithout mercy because otherwise he believes that enemy “could have shot” him(Spiegelman,1986:48). This confrontation of death signals all the following challenges Vladekcould face in the near future.
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Chapter Three The Narrative Ethics in Holocaust Literary Writings...............................47
3.1 The Ethical Choices of Narrative in Holocaust Literary Writings..............................47
3.1.1 Maus: The Ethics of Liberty Based on Personal Narrative..............................48
3.1.2 The Flowers of War: The Ethics of Normativity Based on Collective Narrative........49
Conclusion.................................57
Chapter Three The Narrative Ethics in Holocaust LiteraryWritings
3.1 The Ethical Choices of Narrative in Holocaust Literary Writings
The concept of narrative ethics has been widely recognized in the academic world.Narrative ethics explores the intersections between the domain of stories and storytelling andthat of moral values. Narrative ethics regards moral values as an integral part of storytellingbecause narratives themselves implicitly or explicitly ask the question, “How should one think,judge, and act—as author, narrator, character, or audience—for the greater good?” (Phelan) InChina, by using the concept of narrative ethics, Liu Xiaofeng divides modern narrative ethicsinto the ethics of normativity, which is based on grand narrative, and the ethics of liberty,which is based on personal narrative. He argues that
In the ethics of normativity basing on grand narrative, the grand history goesalong with personal life. Narrative in it seems like centering on individual’s fate.However, it emphasizes more on the purpose of nation, state and history thanindividual’s fate. In the ethics of liberty basing on personal narrative, it focuses onthe sigh or imagination of individual life in which traces of personal life or a varietyof changes in life are presented... The ethics of normativity basing on grandnarrative moralizes about mobilizing and normalizing personal feelings of life; theethics of liberty basing on personal narrative humanizes about empathizing andstretching personal feelings of life. (Liu, 2007:7)
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Conclusion
Different narrative strategies to genocide disasters bring different effects on representingand transmitting historical memories. By a comparative case study of Maus and The Flowersof War, this study takes an attempt to explore how different narrative strategies producedifferent literary works of disaster writing.
Chapter one talks about the literary writing of the Holocaust and Nanjing Massacre.Maus is a semi-autobiographical literary writing about the Holocaust. It reconstructs thehistory of the Holocaust from personal voice. Facing the inaccessible cruelty in narration,Maus take a form of graphic art to visualize the violence in comics so as to reach theinaccessible cruelty. It simplifies the heinous crimes by focusing mainly on Vladek’s heroicnarrative. The Flowers of War is a semi-historical literary writing about Nanjing Massacre. Itrepresents the history of Nanjing Massacre from communal voice in which group of victimsare depicted. Because of a lack of adequate survivors in narration, it thus depicts a group ofvulnerable Chinese victims to form a united collective voice to authoritatively make thedescriptions of disaster objective.‘
Chapter two compares the narrative strategies between Maus and The Flowers of War. InMaus, Vladek strategically constructs himself as an optimistic survivor who could handleanything by his intelligence. However, his free individual narrative somehow is unreliable. Itis reflected mainly in the conflict between the harsh reality that human beings could notsurvive in Auschwitz and Vladek’s positive narrative of his snatching every opportunity ofsurvival. By internal focalization, Vladek restricts the point of view so all the events arerevealed through only his perspective. His subjectivity produces a close narrative distance. Insuch a close distance, Vladek’s image as a heroic father and husband contradicts with his sonArtie and his remarried wife Mala’s knowledge of him as a short-tempered, over-thrifty andextremely suspicious Jew. The contradiction suggests the deep trauma brought about by theHolocaust and arouses the descendants to shoulder the responsibility of transmitting Holocaust memories.
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