Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor Perspectives:
Identity and Trauma in Works by Spiegelman, Rosenbaum and Bukiet
Student: Tsvetan Lyubomirov Varbanov | s2365742 Supervisor: Dr. I. Visser
Date of Completion: 29 June 2015 Word Count: 14,322
Master Thesis in Literary Studies Programme: Writing, Editing and Mediating Department of English Language and Culture
Dedication
To my family, friends and Magdalena, for they all have been a relentless source of support and encouragement. I would also like to thank Dr. Irene Visser for her guidance, helpfulness and
Table of Contents
Introduction 4
Chapter 1: Art Spiegelman's Maus: Diving in Trauma 11
Chapter 2: Thane Rosenbaum's Second Hand Smoke: Drowning in Trauma 28
Chapter 3: Melvin Jules Bukiet's Stories of an Imaginary Childhood: Droplets of Trauma 40
Conclusion 50
Introduction
The systematic relocation, concentration and extermination of European Jewry that took place during World War II is today known as the Holocaust1. Sources point to a death toll of “between 5.5 and 6.1 million Jews” (Gerlach 459). Up to that point in documented history, there had never been anything alike in terms of design and purpose. The aftermath that came afterward has been equally tremendous: “The Holocaust led to the traumatization of generations of Europe's Jews, suffered not only by the survivors but also by many of their descendants” (459). Seventy years later, society is still in search for the right response to this event. If anything, its ramifications have gotten even more complex with the arrival of the second-generation survivors to the foreground. Individuals from this generation have had no direct contact with the Holocaust itself, yet many are affected by it via the damage that has been done to their parents. Rita Goldberg, a Harvard
University teacher of comparative literature and a second-generation survivor, comments on the ramifications of such a predicament: “I met the daughter of a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, whose father refused ever to talk about it and insisted she had no right to ask questions. He said it was nonsense that she should have a part of his history, since his life and hers were separate” (qtd. in Kirsta). Even worse, a recent neurobiological study suggests that this type of inter-generational distance may have implications not only on an emotional level but on a genetic one as well (Kluger).
The study of literature has been thoroughly engaged with the representation of the
Holocaust and its psychological and social implications. Its aim, argues Alan Rosen, is to counteract 1
The victims of the Holocaust were not only the Jewish peoples: “Historians estimate the total number of deaths to be 11 million, with the victims encompassing gay people, priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical
the objectivity of history: “…literature has been shamelessly subjective, offering ardently personal perspectives on what transpired. Emotion was not to be avoided, but rather intensified” (2). English-language Holocaust literature is a prolific sub-category that is filled mainly with
autobiographical works by survivors who have “abandoned their birth languages...”, but also with works by the “post-Holocaust generation” (Kremer 131). The latter – second-generation Holocaust literature – often times is a reflection on what it is to be the progeny of Holocaust survivors. Writings of this type tend to question personal and collective identity and reflect on trauma and inherited trauma (142).
The three books which I have selected as my primary resources are all written by authors who represent the second-generation Holocaust survivor community: The Complete Maus (first published in two separate tomes: 1986, 1992) by Art Spiegelman, Second Hand Smoke (1999) by Thane Rosenbaum and Stories of an Imaginary Childhood (1992) by Melvin Jules Bukiet. Each book address matters of identity, trauma and the relation between the two in its own unique way. I am interested in studying how they represent the second-generation survivor in their narratives and how that representation is linked to Holocaust trauma. Additionally, I am interested in examining how the books portray Holocaust survivors and their trauma and to what extent each narrative has trauma as its core subject.
Two of my three primary sources are works of fiction. Maus is the odd one out since it is based on the actual testimony of Spiegelman's father. Fiction, nevertheless, is equally valid when it comes to the representation of the Holocaust and its complexities. Rosenbaum himself reflects on the genre’s suitability:
judgment, speak to historical truth, and find some sense of resolution or reconciliation for those who suffered unspeakable injury. Most importantly, the novel can serve as a
memorial, a monument so that what happened is not forgotten and the future does not march on without memory. (Royal 17)
The claim that fictional narratives might be an effective tool in representing the Holocaust is also backed up by the prominent theorist and historian Dominick LaCapra:
One might argue that narratives in fiction may also involve truth claims on a structural and general level by providing insight into a phenomena such as slavery or the Holocaust, by offering a reading of a process or period, or by giving at least a plausible “feel” for experience and emotion which may be difficult to arrive at through restricted documentary methods. (LaCapra 13)
The theoretical body of work I utilize throughout this paper consists mainly of two major sources on trauma theory. The first one comes from Dominick LaCapra and it reflects on the ramifications of “acting out” and “working through” trauma – concepts he borrows from
psychoanalysis and develops in such a way so that they can become applicable to the Holocaust and other historical events (141). These states are the result of what is known as “trauma
transference” - the tendency of traumatic events to affect the observer (141). By “acting out” and “working through” observers engage in “coming to terms” with transference (142). This is
especially true for victims of trauma. Persons who “act out”:
repeated and that don't seem to have their ordinary meaning, because they're taking on different connotations from another situation, another place. (143)
Alternatively, people who engage in “working through”:
...gain critical distance on a problem and … distinguish between past, present and future … [F]or the victim, this means the ability to say to oneself: “Yes, that happened to me back then. It was distressing, overwhelming, perhaps I can't entirely disengage myself from it, but I'm existing here and now, and this is different from back then.” (143-144)
With this paper, I employ close reading on my primary sources and extract examples of trauma onto which LaCapra's notions of “acting out” and “working through” can be applied.
The second theoretical source I am using in this paper is Jeffrey C. Alexander's four essential criteria for compiling an effective “new master narrative” (Alexander 12). According to his theory, a text needs to be able to convince a wider audience that a described traumatic event truly is traumatic, and it needs to address a set of matters clearly: the “nature of the pain”, the “nature of the victim”, “relation of the trauma victim to the wider audience”, and the “attribution of responsibility” (12-15).
With “the nature of pain” the narrative needs to explain “[w]hat actually happened – to the particular group and to the wider collectivity of which it is a part” (13). For example, what
happened to the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo? How did they die – starvation, displacement or deliberately murdered? How many died (13)?
victims of the Holocaust: which group of Jewish people was the primary victim – the German, the Polish, the European or the Jewish people as a whole; and were communists, homosexuals, and handicapped people also victims of the Nazi Holocaust (13)?
Another feature of a compelling representation is the “relation of the trauma victim to the wider audience”. When the pain is clear and he victims established it is important for the members of the audience to be able to relate to the trauma experience. At the beginning of the trauma process it is typical that the audience does not relate to the victimized group but when “the victims are represented in terms of valued qualities shared by the larger collective identity will the audience be able to symbolically participate in the experience of the originating trauma” (qtd. in Alexander 13). For example, Gypsies are acknowledged as victims but the larger number of Europeans describe them as deviant and uncultivated and thus their suffering does not relate to the larger audience (14).
The last feature – “attribution of responsibility” is of great significance for the trauma narrative. The audience needs to identify the person who injured the victim, the one who caused the trauma (15). The question here is who created the Holocaust – “the country” or the Nazi Regime? Or was it the army and the common soldier or even ordinary people (15)?
Chapter 1 explores Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus: an Auschwitz survivor's
instances of trauma that become obvious via their interaction and Art's re-imagining of that interaction.
Chapter 2 explores Thane Rosenbaum's Second Hand Smoke – arguably a lesser known work. Still, there are some like Derek Royal – editorial director of Brown Books Publishing Group – who would not shy away from suggesting that “no contemporary writer has done more to mark the ongoing legacy of the Holocaust than Thane Rosenbaum” (Royal 1). The phrase “legacy of the Holocaust” is key for this chapter. Spiegelman touches upon the second-generational experience that lasts well into the present, while Rosenbaum completely fixates on it and, by extension, on trauma. Rosenbaum himself states: “I don't write about the Holocaust. My novels deal with the post-Holocaust universe, so if anything I am a post-Holocaust novelist. This distinction is not trivial. I don't write about the years 1933-45, nor would I ever” (qtd. in Royal 4). Nevertheless, his works are still unconditionally tied to the Holocaust – they have materialized because of it, they are its aftermath. While Maus looks into the Holocaust out of curiosity, Second Hand Smoke presents the past of the Katz family as a curse which defines every aspect of their life. Duncan – the book's protagonist – suffers extreme instances of child abuse, isolation and lack of affection. My method of reading and interpreting Second Hand Smoke resonates with the one I employ in Chapter 1: determining the relationship between the second-generation survivor and his parents and society before identifying instances of trauma being “acted out” or “worked through”.
Chapter 3 discusses what can be described as a third method – in relation to Maus and
Second Hand Smoke – of approaching the Holocaust. The primary source for this chapter is Melvin
Jules Bukiet's book titled Stories of an Imaginary Childhood. Similar to Rosenbaum's Second Hand
Smoke, Bukiet's work does not address the Holocaust directly. However, it also does not discuss –
against an imaginary background in the hypothetical year of 1928. Thus, none of the stories even contain the word “Holocaust”. Nevertheless, Stories of an Imaginary Childhood is driven by a Holocaust theme. It also contains a wider commentary on antisemitism throughout history and on what it means to have a Jewish legacy. This is the primary source that requires the most subjective reading. I interpret the narrator's relationship with his community as an allegory of a relationship between a second-generation survivor and a survivor community. Furthermore, I identify
Holocaust references within the text: some are deliberate while others are more subjective and found via close reading. I then apply LaCapra's notions on these references to classify them as instances of “trauma transference”.
In all three chapters, I put the respective narratives of my primary resources against Jeffrey C. Alexander's four essential criteria for a successful “master narrative”. Given their respective strains of originality, none of the books cover all prerequisites flawlessly to enter Alexander's category. The results, however, do not devalue the works' traumatic nature.
Finally, again in each chapter, I explore the possible interpretations of the books' structures, narration styles and formats as metaphors or references to established concepts relating to
Chapter 1
Art Spiegelman's Maus : Diving in Trauma
With Maus, Art Spiegelman journals his personal immersion into the traumatic past of his father, Vladek Spiegelman. Vladek is of Polish-Jewish origin and a survivor of Auschwitz who shortly after World War II emigrates to the United States. In 1978 the estranged Art, or Artie, as consistently referred to in the book, reconnects with his father with the intent to “draw that book” about him (Spiegelman 11). From this point on, the narrative starts following their meetings but also visually represents Vladek's stories from his past. They trace his significant life events in pre-war and war-torn Poland: him meeting Art's late mother, Anja, for the first time; him being drafted in the army to fight the Germans; him and his family trying to emigrate from Poland; his life in the camps and ultimately his survival and reunification with Anja. The interviewing sessions they have together prove to be a working environment where Artie can finally get to know his father and start making sense of the past and present legacy of the Spiegelmans. As Art himself admits in an interview for
The Guardian: “Auschwitz became for us a safe place: a place where he could talk and I would
listen” (qtd. in Cooke). What Spiegelman has to listen to, however, is a narrative of suffering, trauma and loss.
While Vladek and his surviving of the Holocaust is central to the story of Maus,
Spiegelman's own narrative that runs parallel to Vladek's is also integral to the plot: Artie is the son who had never managed to bond with his parents mainly because of their contrasting
backgrounds. He is a post-war child who has been born in Sweden and raised in the United States; a product of his parents' attempt to leave behind the shadow of the Holocaust and rebuild their lives. On the face of it, Artie is a second-generation survivor and is therefore prone to the
not indicate if Artie has any resulting physiological conditions but does consistently evoke an underlying emotional burden that stems from his familial environment. The opening caption on the very first chapter reads: “I went out to see my Father in Rego Park. I hadn't seen him in a long time – we weren't that close” (Spiegelman 11). Immediately before that opening, Spiegelman offers a brief glimpse into his upbringing in the form of a two-paged preface: a young Artie sustains a minor injury on his roller skates and is subsequently left behind by his friends. Emotionally and physically hurt, he approaches his father: “I-I fell, and my friends skated away w-without me” (6). Vladek does not offer him any comfort: “Friends? Your friends?... If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week... then you could see what it is, friends!...” (6). This sample of a father-son relationship highlights the problem Artie has had with Vladek throughout his childhood. Artie's misfortune and suffering in life has always been seen as secondary by his father, whose own plight is beyond comparison (Le Vaul-Grimwood 66). Unlike the survivor mentioned in Alix Kirsta's article who denies his daughter any access to his past experiences, Vladek, as the subtitle of the first volume of Maus reads, “bleeds history” (Spiegelman 7). He openly talks about his suffering in the past and utilizes it to induce guilt and demean any trauma that may be affecting Artie or anyone else around him. In her essay “The Orphaned Voice in Art Spiegelman's Maus I and II”, Hamida Bosmajian reflects on the symbolism of Spiegelman's subtitle:
Vladek bleeds history not only in the sense of a possibly therapeutic blood-letting of his experiences, but in the continuous seepage of repressed and displaced memories that affected Artie every day of his childhood … The blood of memory of the experience in traumatic history cannot be contained and its seepage is contagious. (Bosmajian 7)
also has to suffer the silence of his mother when it comes to the Holocaust past. In the much discussed “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” comic, injected directly into the narrative of Maus, Artie (or, as referred to in this segment, Arthur) reflects on his mother's suicide which she had
committed in 1969, and laments the fact that she did not even leave a note. Thus, Arthur is left alone in this world only with his overbearing sense of guilt and his traumatized father (102-105). The last chance for him to gain some insight into his mother's history goes literally up in smoke when Vladek admits that he has burned her diaries which were originally meant for Artie:
(161).
Thus, he is practically denied access to his mother's perspective even though she had actually been willing to share her story.
(103-105).
In the first chapter of Maus II it transpires that Artie's partner, Francoise, is also a cause of concern for Vladek and other members of the survivor community. The Torah exclusively forbids
intermarriages; especially between a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman (Dubov). By pairing with Artie, the gentile Francoise is seen as a possible threat to the collective Jewish identity. Eventually, before marrying Artie, she has had to convert to Judaism in a bid to appease a disapproving Vladek (Spiegelman 171). Later on, Artie has an encounter with another family of survivors who seem to be close to Vladek. The first thing they ask about Artie's wife is if she is Jewish (182). Spiegelman depicts himself as a largely secular character, so the result is a conflict of values: the pressure coming from his family and community to adhere to traditional practices attributes to his own identity crisis.
The root factor in Artie's plight is, of course, the trauma of his parents. Although he is unable to assimilate and represent his mother's trauma within the narrative of Maus, he does so with the trauma of his father. When discussing his past, Vladek does not demonstrate any aversion to the traumatic topic at hand. In fact, he is quite eager to share his story even if that means being overwhelmingly graphic (Spiegelman 232). He is exhibiting, however, other symptoms that
referring to the “reliving of the trauma in intrusive memories ... or dreams” (ICD-10 120). In Maus, there are several instances where Vladek is having restless nights: “He's moaning in his sleep again. When I was a kid I thought that was the noise all grown-ups made while they slept” (Spiegelman 234). While Artie's comment suggests that Vladek's nightmares are a chronic issue, it also
emphasizes the effect those nightmares have had on Artie: distorting his reality. Another symptom for PTSD defined by the World Health Organization is the rarely manifested “dramatic, acute bursts of fear, panic or aggression, triggered by stimuli arousing a sudden recollection and/or
re-enactment of the trauma or of the original reaction to it” (ICD-10 120). An example of such an outburst in Maus would be the episode where Vladek and Artie are in a bank vault, rummaging in Vladek's “safety box”. There Artie's father laments the state of his second marriage and is then suddenly overwhelmed by an acute feeling of sorrow:
(Spiegelman 129).
Vladek is not directly reliving an episode from the Holocaust but a consequence of the Holocaust: the loss of his wife. Ultimately, his character takes shape as traumatized in a strictly psychological context.
redundant. It can be, however, interpreted as due to the fact that back in Auschwitz the lack of commodities caused mass starvation and misery. In the comfort of his Catskills bungalow, Vladek is seen having a near-crisis at the prospect of wasting more wooden matchsticks than necessary: “Only to light the oven I use them. These wood matches I have to buy! The paper matches I can have free from the lobby of the Pines Hotel” (180). His obsession over saving as much as possible matches becomes understandable only after gaining some insight on how precious everything was back then:
(Spiegelman 224).
Bitter experience has taught him not to let his guard down as it quickly transpires that in Auschwitz he had lost a full box of cigarettes: “I'm telling you I wanted to cry” (224). Now, in his new life in the States, he is “acting out” the deprivation he had to endure during the Holocaust. Once this becomes clear, Artie's concern expressed in the first volume of Maus that his father's character is taking shape as a stereotypical “miserly old jew” loses some of its validity (133). Chronologically, the narrative of Maus plays with the reader's expectations and represents first the “acting out” of an event and second the traumatic event itself. The same logic applies to Vladek's racist
(258).
His prejudice is far from justified but, given his state of reliving episodes from his past, hardly comes as a surprise either. Valdek defends his views by relying on his experience: “When first I came to New York I worked in the garment center. Before this I didn't see coloreds… but there it was shvartsers everywhere, and if I put down only for one second my valuables, they took!” (Spiegelman 260). Even in a post-Holocaust environment, his fears of being robbed are still potent. When a robbing does occur, it only builds on his existing trauma, and thus he associates black people with theft and, by extension, with the Holocaust. Right after Vladek's defense of his racist views, Artie tries to appease a shocked Francoise:
(Spiegelman 260).
point of such criticism would have been to provide the much needed critical distance described by LaCapra.
Instances of Artie “acting out” his own trauma are rare and somewhat obscure. The most prominent chapter in that respect is “Time Flies”. There, the reader gains some insight on the psyche of Art Spiegelman – the artist and author of Maus. The chapter tries to be stylistically consistent with the rest of the book but “fails”. Consequently, the characters are obvious humans wearing mere animal masks of mice, cats and dogs. Another oddity of this chapter are the
hallucinatory piles of dead bodies of anthropomorphic mice (entirely consistent with the rest of the book's canon of depiction) that seem to occupy the surroundings. The last panel on the first page of the chapter also suggests that Art is a camp prisoner himself – there is a watchtower seen from the window of his studio:
(Spiegelman 201).
true, but the ambiguity is present nevertheless. Objectively, Art's proximity to the Holocaust via such imagery is nonsensical – he never did experience any of the Nazi atrocities personally. The exact date in which this episode takes place is unknown, but via deduction it becomes clear that it is sometime between February and May of 1987: post-Vladek's death, after the release,
commercial success and critical acclaim of the first volume of Maus, and prior to the composition of Maus II. Some have argued that the dead bodies, especially the ones in the panel shown above, stand to represent Art's guilt about his success being built on the suffering of the actual victims of the Holocaust: “… because his drawing table is mounted directly upon (or perhaps even rises out of) their bodies, his artistic production is thus ... based on their suffering and death. His aesthetic project and its commercial success are predicated on the trauma, loss, and destruction of others” (McGlothlin 81). LaCapra's concept of “trauma transference”, however, is equally applicable when examining the panel. The dead bodies and the camp enclosure are foreign to Art, but that does not inhibit his mind to envision them or even to become haunted by them:
Transference takes place in relations between people (for example, students, notably graduate students, and professors) and perhaps more interestingly – because less developed – in one's relationship to the object of study itself. When you study
something, at some level you always have a tendency to repeat the problems you are studying … This transferential relation helps one to understand the so-called
contagiousness of trauma – the way it can spread even to the interviewer or commentator… (LaCapra 142)
pestered by a band of journalists and corporate moguls, he leaves for an appointment with his personal therapist, Pavel:
(203).
There he commences a process of “working through” his trauma by discussing his writer's block, his guilt, the unimaginable suffering of the Holocaust victims, and his father's problematic character.
(Spiegelman 232).
The examples of plight and suffering throughout the book are graphic and as historically accurate as they can be, and thus the nature of the pain is clearly defined.
historical distinctions” (Martinez-Alfaro 108). The same is applicable for the “attribution of
responsibility”. Days after the liberation of the camps, Vladek and a fellow survivor stumble upon a local family amidst their ruined house:
(Spiegelman 290).
Vladek's reaction suggests that he does not fully distinguish between Nazis and German common folk.
The “relation of the trauma victim to the wider audience” is also a challenging requirement for Maus to fulfill. Vladek is the Holocaust victim in this context, but more often than not he does not come across as a character worthy of admiration. Indeed, the post-war Vladek does not seem to have grown as a person from his experiences: “...unimaginable suffering, Spiegelman wants us to understand, doesn't make a person better; it just makes them suffer” (Cooke). However, as I have demonstrated above, many of Vladek's fallacies have certain causative factors. Besides, when Vladek does display redeeming qualities and virtue, the impact on the readership of Maus is profoundly strong. One of many such displays can be identified in the camp. Soon after his imprisonment, the opportunity arises for Vladek to obtain new clothes solely for himself.
(Spiegelman 192).
It is a thoroughly human moment of generosity and comradeship which throws light on Vladek's compassion and bravery – two virtues that resonate strongly within modern society. The entirety of Vladek's character, however, remains morally ambiguous.
Most importantly, however, Art does not come across as a decisive “carrier group” agent. Such people “have both ideal and material interests” (Alexander 11). When asked what should his readers get from Maus, Spiegelman's response is “A message? I dunno...” (Spiegelman 202). His uncertainty suggests that he does not have a clearly defined agenda. Because of that, Art is not entirely “fit” to construct a trauma master narrative (as defined by Jeffrey C. Alexander).
violent events necessarily re-enter the continuum, are totalised by it, and thus seem to lose their “violent” quality. In as much as violence is “resolved” in narrative, the violent event seems also to lose its particularity – i.e. its facthood – once written events assume the mantle of coherence that narrative necessarily imposes on them, the trauma of their unassimilability is relieved. (Young 13)
To avoid trivializing the traumatic and tremendous event of the Holocaust, Spiegelman has implemented several narrative techniques which are designed to infuse Maus with a sense of authenticity.
The complex chronology of the story is one such technique. Art can be seen struggling to preserve the linearity of the book's narrative within the book itself: “Wait! Please, Dad. If you don't keep your story chronological, I'll never get it straight … tell me more about 1941 and 1942” (Spiegelman 83-84). He would later realize that an effective representation of an atrocity such as the Holocaust would be more prone to success if left in an environment of disorder and
fragmentation:
In forcing Vladek back into a strictly chronological account, Art preserves his own sense of narrative progression, but he derails his father’s. Vladek’s narrative choices highlight the brutal irony and futility of trying to “protect” his first-born son, an idea that is still conveyed in Spiegelman’s account, but perhaps less poignantly. It is an instance that illustrates one of the critical pitfalls of the ethnographic process: the ways in which the ethnographer's voice so easily subsumes and even silences the subject’s. (Hathaway 260) After his request to keep the events in order of occurrence, Artie seems to give up on that idea. From that point on, the structure and coherence of Maus become less relevant. The retrospective “Prisoner on the Hell Planet”, as story within a story, is one such example of chronological
Another structural peculiarity of the Maus narrative is its parallel structure. The oscillation between “present” (the father-and-son sessions) and “past” (Vladek's stories) is ever present throughout the chapters, rupturing the continuity of the story. The beginning of the “Time Flies” chapter, which I discussed previously, presents a third temporal dimension which some have labeled as the “super-present”: an occurrence which “occupies a place outside the movement of life, in a static space that is not the antithesis of life, but a place where life's ebb and flow do not reach” (McGlothlin 78). Art also utilizes the graphic aspect of his book to further transmit a sense of temporal chaos:
(Spiegelman 228).
Alternatively, Art also uses his artistic depictions to supplement the auditory power of his father's testimony with visual stimuli. Amidst the panels, he frequently attaches various images which add to the story: maps, blueprints, schemes and cross-cut sections of buildings and hiding places. The book's characters also use the comic book medium to emote in ways which are otherwise unrepresentable with the usage of plain-text alone. The most profound example of this is, again, in “Time Flies”. While conversing with his therapist, Art laments the fact that he cannot even “begin” to imagine what Auschwitz had felt like for the survivors. In response, Pavel can only think of one thing: a “BOO!” jump-scare:
(Spiegelman 206).
Consequently, Artie is seen literally jumping from his chair with an expression of extreme distress. The fact that Pavel's only way to convey the camp experience is via an onomatopoeic device underscores the arbitrary nature and futility of an unassisted textual medium when it comes to Holocaust representation. The device would have worked just as well if it was a “BANG”, “WHAM”, “KABLAM” or anything else. The importance falls on the effect which it has over Art.
narrow-mindedness. Art's trauma is more specific. In the few instances where one sees him “acting out” his trauma, he seems to be reliving events which he never lived through in the first place: such is the result of “trauma transference”. One can argue that second-generation survivors are prone to acquiring their parent's trauma and simultaneously suffer an identity crisis as a complication of the “original” trauma (the Holocaust): feelings of inadequacy, no sense of belonging, and a
Chapter 2:
Thane Rosenbaum's Second Hand Smoke: Drowning in Trauma
Second Hand Smoke tells the story of Duncan Katz – born and raised in the USA by a couple of
Holocaust survivors, Mila and Yankee Katz, who emigrated from Poland shortly after the war. Because of their troubled past, Duncan's severely traumatized parents do not provide him with an adequate childhood. Quite on the contrary, his mother seems to be obsessed with the idea of him becoming a Jewish avenger. As a result, Duncan spends most of his youth in an environment of borderline child abuse – street fights, gangster circles, extreme physical strain in the form of contact sports. In exchange he receives no praise nor affection. As soon as he has the opportunity, Duncan leaves his troubled home and becomes an overly zealous prosecutor and Nazi-hunter. His job-turned-obsession takes further toll on his private life. Shortly after his mother dies of cancer and after being fired from his job, Duncan finds out that he has a half-brother somewhere in Poland. A trip to Europe ensues in search of his last remaining relative who may be his last chance at attaining closure.
Similar to Art Spiegelman's character in Maus, Duncan is strongly affected by his Holocaust survivor parents. In Chapter 1 I established that Vladek has an overbearing presence over Artie. In
Second Hand Smoke the source of such a presence is Mila Katz. However, she is much more
extreme in her behavior and beliefs. She does not provide him with any motherly affection
… Mila would insist that Duncan be dropped off on some street corner in Newark or Hoboken. She was testing him out against the local competition.
“They don't fight any different up here,” she said confidently. “Make me proud.” “I hear they use knives,” Duncan said.
“You watch too much television. Besides, a big fist is still the best weapon,” she said, closing the fingers of her large hands and throwing a right hook at some imaginary target. (Rosenbaum 32)
This overt display of disregard for Duncan's safety stems from her desire to construct the perfect Jewish avenger. Even though she feels no love for him, she is continuously engaged in his
development to make sure that he is reared just the way she wants him to be.
When Mila is on her deathbed, Duncan visits her at the hospital with the hope of attaining some closure after a long period of estrangement. Much to his horror, she greets him with a jumbled and harrowing lexical barrage. Delirious from the advanced stage of her disease and probably under heavy sedation, she shouts out a seemingly random string of words:
MAMA! ZEIDA. YANKEE. CHECK. CHECK. KNOCK. KNOCK. HIT ME. HIT ME! HIT ME AGAIN. CALL. RAISE. RAISE AGAIN AND I'LL SEE YOU ANOTHER DOLLAR. CUT. CAROM. CHULA. JOEY. RUSTY. ASIS. PUPPY POLAND. KICK! GET HIM, DUNCAN! ISAAC. SO SORRY. SO SORRY. ISAAC. MY BOY. MY BOYS. DUNCAN… (Rosenbaum 65)
This is the last time Mila gets to dominate over her son with her presence. Ironically, it is also the first time she opens up to him with a genuine expression of remorse over her abandonment of Isaac and probably a remorse over her mistreatment of Duncan.
Duncan's father, Yankee, on the other hand, is shown as extremely passive throughout. He is represented as an unremarkable man who would rather not reflect on his past and expresses distaste to anyone who tries to decipher him. His new name, “Yankee”, can be read as an attempt at forging a new identity which would leave his old one at the door of the States. One of the most telling scenes in the book about Yankee's aversion follows after the moment when Duncan
expresses his curiosity on what had happened during the Holocaust:
Yankee would sit at a desk beside windows that overlooked the Atlantic. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Father, what are you writing?” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Father, who are you writing to?” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Father, what happened to you during the war?” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Yankee had so much to say, but so little was said to his son. Instead, he talked only to that old [typewriter]. (31)
Trauma theorist and neurologist Dori Laub observes such behavior in some of the witnesses he encounters. His reflection on that phenomena is that survivors tend to remain silent:
...as to protect themselves from the fear of being listened to – and of listening to
bondage. Silence is for them a fated exile, yet also a home, a destination, and a binding oath. To not return from this silence is a rule rather than exception. (Laub 58)
Rosenbaum uses the clutter of the typewriter (“Tap”) as a persistent manifestation of repressed memories and as a paradoxical, ever increasing sound (“Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.”) of silence.
The culminating effect of Duncan's parents on his childhood results in his absolute estrangement from them as an adult: “… Duncan became a no-show in Miami. The fact that his mother still lived there – particularity that she lived there – didn't make his reappearance likely” (Rosenbaum 19). Because of leaving his family and friends at an early age, Duncan is seen as an outcast from his own Jewish community. Ignorant to what his childhood had been, the attendees at his mother's funeral express their disapproval of his presence. He tries to enlighten them to the fact that “[i]n those days they didn't call anything child abuse, but Mila gave the term new
meaning” (55). Nobody shows understanding and one member even assaults him soon after. To the Jewish crowd gathered at his mother's funeral, he is simply a wandering, ungrateful son who does not show remorse even before the dead body of a parent.
Duncan also faces discrimination on a professional level because of his troubled legacy. When he attends an interview for a job at the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the
department's director shows wariness of the prospect of “[h]aving someone like [him] in the office” (22). The irony here is that despite his pent up anger towards his mother, he still wants to lead her war: to hunt down the remaining agents of the Holocaust by all means necessary. The director warns him that society might already be on a path of moving on:
“Don't be surprised if some Americans Boo.” “Excuse me?”
“Come on,” Duncan said, half-smiling, assuming that the otherwise earnest prosecutor was putting him on. (Rosenbaum 22)
With his zeal and with the power that comes with that position, Duncan can only make more enemies who go beyond the Jewish community. In fact, he does cross over a line which results in him being fired. In a sense, his image of an overly-zealous Nazi hunter who is all body and no soul is similar to a concept from Jewish mythology: a golem. The third book from Rosenbaum's trilogy –
The Golems of Gotham – is much more laden with this type of symbolism, but Second Hand Smoke is also very straightforward on drawing parallels between Duncan and a golem: “Mila had
wanted a golem for a son, and she got one” (Rosenbaum 208-209). The original golem, according to the legend, was a creation of Rabbi Judah Loew:
In the tales that follow his creation, the golem performs many feats of rescue and strength. Sometimes he patrols the streets of Prague at night; at other times he provides evidence regarding a Jew who has been arrested on blood libel charges so that the accused is exonerated. Eventually, either because the golem becomes destructive or because his heroic qualities are deemed no longer necessary, Rabbi Loew determines to withdraw his life, often in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, the oldest operating synagogue in Europe. (Baer 3)
Duncan would be the type of golem whose “heroic qualities” seem unnecessary even before assuming his position at the OSI. By obsessing over his last case, he becomes “destructive” to the organization and to himself. Either case requires his termination.
the most part, Mila can be observed “acting out” on her trauma: her incessant paranoia and her obsession with raising Duncan to be the ultimate Nazi hunter, serve as signs which suggest that – akin to Vladek – she is still reliving the past. Even though she emigrates to the free world soon after the war, her newly forged belief system refuses to accept any type of authority:
There was a lot of pressure to conform to new rules: happy families: two-car garages, postwar American superiority. Mila wasn't interested in any of that shit. Nothing made sense to her except us. She didn't want to live with rules anymore, so she became attracted to everything that was corrupt, but also free. (Rosenbaum 281)
Mila has let her survival instincts define every aspect of her life even though that same life has the benefit to continue in the land of the free.
As much as Mila outranks Vladek in terms of overbearing presence and trauma severity, she does arrive at a point where she actually starts a process of “working through”. In the hands of her three hospital nurses, she feels an uncanny sense of safety and opens up about many of her regrets and about her past in general:
“...Duncan was born, but not loved, at least not by me. I drove him away. All I have of him are the things he outgrew: old shoes, football cleats, karate dogis, even his baby teeth.”
Mila began to cry. (Rosenbaum 206)
This episode of “working through” – acknowledging the fact that throughout her entire life she actively wanted to estrange her son – comes only after she is already on her deathbed.
Nevertheless, it is still more than what Maus has to offer on Holocaust survivors “working through” their trauma.
scream and a river of sweat that soaked right through the center of the mattress” (Rosenbaum 142). Even though he distances himself from his parents early in his adult life, their trauma remains with him: “Duncan can escape Miami Beach for Washington, D.C., but as a survivor of survivors, he nonetheless psychically inherits his mother's rage…” (Furman 80). To make matters worse, the Holocaust continues to seep into him because of his own obsession for justice. He buries himself in literature exclusively on the Holocaust (Rosenbaum 75). In the context of LaCapra's comment on trauma and its contagiousness, Duncan is the “student” and history is the “object of study” and therefore “trauma transference” from the latter to the former can resume even without the overbearing presence of his mother.
The most vivid and absurd instance of trauma being “acted out” by Duncan comes with the events that unfold at the ruins of Birkenau. Him and his brother encounter a group of neo-Nazis acting out a military drill:
Young goons, some dressed in brown, some in jungle green. Bundeswehr parachutist boots on their feet, or high laced Doc Martens. Muscled but mindless, running around with rifles headed by knives, bayoneting strawmen dressed up to look like Hasidim and Wall Street investment bankers. (Rosenbaum 249)
Duncan and Isaac are then captured by the neo-Nazis and imprisoned in the camp, their heads get shaven and their clothes are suddenly camp prisoner uniforms. Duncan loses both his stomach medicine and his sanity. The very place itself seems to sap the energy out of him thus rendering the one thing he excels in useless. My interpretation of this uncanny development is that he is reliving life as a camp prisoner: weak and malnourished, he is no match for his captors.
The whole ordeal at Birkenau appears to be a product of his active imagination. As an episode of “acting out”, this ludicrous experience may actually be therapeutic:
Even someone like Saul Friedlander, in his partial affinity with postmodernism, would accept the idea that in the Holocaust there is excess, which is unrepresentable and difficult to conceptualize. On a certain level, I agree. But one of the techniques of certain forms of poststructural thinking has been to try to counteract excess through excess. This is, in a way, a homeopathic response. You take the “illness” and you counteract it through a proper dosage of the illness itself. (LaCapra 154)
Indeed, it is exactly inside the camp where Duncan has a meltdown and then surrenders his grudge: “'Mourn, Duncan,' Isaac whispered in between the Greshwin chorus. 'The fight is over; nobody won. Not you, not Mila. Say goodbye to our mother. You should have done it at her funeral, but it's not too late'” (Rosenbaum 272).
After this ordeal, Duncan extends his stay in Poland, literally gaining distance from the hotbed of his problems. Thus, he resumes the process of “working through” which had started in the camp. When the brothers arrive in Duncan's apartment in the States, it is Isaac who advises him to throw away his collection of books “out the window” (288). Should Duncan eventually choose to do so, the link between him and the “object of study” would suffer yet another blow.
Even though Second Hand Smoke is, as I have demonstrated so far, heavily laden with trauma, it exhibits certain characteristics that potentially hinder its categorization as a “trauma master narrative” as per Jeffrey C. Alexander's criteria. Regarding the “nature of the crime”, Rosenbaum, unlike Spiegelman, does not try to imagine what the Holocaust actually felt like. His lack of direct Holocaust representation is in stark contrast with the graphic imagery found in Maus.
Second Hand Smoke's narrative veers into representing the damage that comes after an event such
allow for that, and this was a special crime’’ (Rosenbaum 2). The aftermath of an atrocity is core when it comes to trauma, but leaving out the actual event that has caused this aftermath strips the narrative from some of its powers.
The “nature of the victim” can be found in the faces of Mila and Duncan as they are the most nuanced characters in the book. Mila is a victim the Holocaust, while Duncan is a victim of Mila being a victim of the Holocaust. Given that they both suffer from an identity crisis it would be highly subjective to say that they stand as representatives of other survivors and
second-generation survivors.
When it comes to the “relation of the victims to the wider audience”, Second Hand Smoke is somewhat complex. Throughout the majority of the book, post-Holocaust Mila has little to no redeeming features. However, as I have demonstrated above, Mila eventually opens up to her nurses about everything tragic and shameful in her life. The nurses, who in the beginning have little to no knowledge about the Holocaust, can now fully relate to Mila's hellish predicament: “'Mila, come on now, baby, you are not a bad person,' Louise said calmly. 'The war made you this way. Your sons never had no chance to know their real mother – the person you would have been if there was no Auschwitz'” (Rosenbaum 206). This way, Rosenbaum shows how a completely unbiased point of view can be greatly affected by the victim and show unconditional empathy.
Duncan, as a victim, relates better with the wider audience despite the fact that he comes across as a brute. The origin of his predicament – his inheritance of his parents' trauma – is
The “attribution of responsibility” in Second Hand Smoke is problematic. While the
narrative holds a strong rhetoric against Nazis and collaborators, it also shows Duncan struggling to overcome his prejudice against all Germans and all things German:
“What's the least German car you have?” he finally asked. “I'm sorry, I still don't know what you mean.”
“Do you know if Opel makes ovens on the side? You know, the Mercedes people helped the Nazis, back in the good old days before you were born. Ask your parents; maybe they'll come clean and tell you about it.” (Rosenbaum 177)
In that respect, Duncan reminds of Vladek who is glad to witness the misery that has befallen the entirety of the German people since he feels that it is them who are responsible for his own suffering. In both cases, this is a sign of over-generalization and as such does not provide an accurate answer as to who exactly was responsible.
allows the narrative to stretch all the way back to the late forties in post-war Poland. He is known to have used this technique in the past. His first book, Elijah Visible, has been written in such a way as to reflect the mental state of its protagonist:
I wrote the chapters as a fragmented novel—a metaphor for Adam Posner (who in one guise or another appears in each chapter, a broken man living in a broken world). And, as you know, the chapters are not arranged in a linear order, furthering the complexity of what message is being imparted about this post-Holocaust protagonist. (qtd. in Royal 6) In a similar vein, Second Hand Smoke also deals with the ramifications of post-Holocaust trauma. According to Robert Eaglestone, Holocaust fiction often tends to substitute “consistent focus” with a style that “playfully chops and changes” (Eaglestone 129). A fragmented narrative creates an aura of trauma which can somehow be present without an immediate traumatic event: “Trauma is a disruptive experience that disarticulates the self and creates holes in existence; it has belated effects that are controlled only with difficulty and perhaps never fully mastered.” (LaCapra 41). My suggestion is that Second Hand Smoke's narrative lapses in time and space stand for such holes in existence. These spaces mimic the non-sequential chronology of recalling a traumatic event.
This blurring of time and space; of past and present can be seen as a representation of Duncan “acting out” on his mother's trauma.
The past and the present are also mashed together in the episode of the ever-swinging swings. Duncan's brother, Isaac implies that the ghosts of children – victims of Nazi persecution – rock on the swings of a Warsaw playground to this very day (216): “The ghosts of Jewish children at unfinished play, Rosenbaum suggests, rattle the rusted chains of these twelve swings” (Furman 81). The twelve swings stand for the twelve Jewish tribes and their function is keep the memory of trauma alive for if it were forgotten, the deaths of millions would be have been in vain (81).
Second Hand Smoke offers the most pronounced example of second-generation survivor
identity crisis: an exaggerated brute of a man, who has been desensitized by his mother. The conflict between the two generations is almost insurmountable. Trauma is extremely dominant in Rosenbaum's text and LaCapra's notions fit effortlessly on the behavior of the characters. Jeffrey C. Alexander's criteria, however, are not fully fulfilled. In that context, Second Hand Smoke lacks in terms of depicting the actual event of the Holocaust and the main character exhibits an
Chapter 3
Melvin Jules Bukiet's Stories of an Imaginary Childhood : Droplets of Trauma
Melvin Jules Bukiet's Stories of Imaginary Childhood is a novel in stories. It is set in a small Polish ghetto (shtetl) called Proszowice. The period in which these stories develop is at the doorstep of World War II: the year of 1928. The inspiration for this setting comes from of Bukiet's father - “a Polish survivor who immigrated to America in 1948, [he] spoke constantly of Proszowice, his boyhood shtetl. In fact, as a child Bukiet believed that Europe comprised four major cities: London, Paris, Rome, and Proszowice” (Berger 114). Stories of an Imaginary Childhood portrays a peculiar community that is simultaneously pestered by poverty and isolation and blessed with humor, philosophical wittiness and tradition. Objectively, being first published in 1992, the book also contains an abundance of references to the Holocaust. Bukiet himself acknowledges that fact in the afterword of the 2002 edition of the work: “… the War is obviously the enormous, unstated subject of Imaginary Childhood. Its shadow hangs over the book, and any sane reader ought to know what will happen to every single person in the book ten years after the last page” (Bukiet 201). Consequently, in this chapter, I discuss mainly that referential aspect of Stories of an
Imaginary Childhood: its unconventional perspective on the Holocaust and the traces of trauma
and inter-generational struggle.
total isolation and ostracizing. However, his relationship with his family still can be read as an allegory for a relationship between Holocaust survivors and second-generation survivors. For example, in the first story of the book, “The Virtuso”, the boy endures some exaggerated positive reinforcement from his parents regarding his prowess in playing the violin:
The unfortunate truth was that, despite many hours of diligent practice, my execution no more resembled melody than pigs. But I was the dutiful son of loving parents, and so I continued to let the bow whine its length along the four strings and back again, and my family continued to ooh and to ahh, and the cat continued to attend me with tone-deaf devotion, and I hated every second of it. (Bukiet 8)
Interestingly, in Second Hand Smoke, Duncan is seen in a similar, yet inverted, predicament. His mother dismisses his desires for learning to play the violin:
“Nonsence”, Mila said, which was like a keller codeword meaning “end of conversation”. “What are you going to do with a violin? What kind of protection is that? Such a delicate instrument, like a toothpick. It would break right in your hands.”
“The violin is not a weapon,” Duncan said. It's not for swinging; it's for playing.” “You don't have time to play,” Mila shot back. “Now go… practice your kicks!” (Rosenbaum 29)
These two examples of parent-son interaction show a certain control being exerted over the latter generation. Bukiet's narrator is being coaxed into an activity in which he is objectively not good at. Duncan's case is more extreme as he is being borderline forced into contact sports. Nevertheless, the dynamic between the two is similar and shows a conflict of opinions.
tradition – catching sight of the divine Kohanim2 who are being otherwise prepared for their ceremonial cleansing of the people of Proszowice: “It was the first deliberate act of religious disobedience of my life. I expected the slimy arm of the Devil to reach through the floor of the shul and drag me under” (Bukiet 19). His guilt is palpable due to the fact that he has been brought up to follow tradition and conform to the Talmudic scriptures. Nevertheless, his conflicting primal urge to indulge in defiance is in stark contrast with his family's “fear of the secular” (4). In that sense, akin to Duncan and Artie's characters, Bukiet's narrator is somewhat of a misfit within his own community: a skeptic who is not afraid to push the boundaries of established notions
(Jewishness being one such notion). His frustrations take shape into daydreaming about being able to fly:
They were the statues, caught fast beneath millstones of their belief, unaware of the freedom that lay one step beyond. I may have looked like them, a Yiddish miniature in a prayer shawl and yarmulke, but I was vibrating like a softly tappet cymbal … Ah, to shed the yoke that bore us down, to harness that magnificent lack… (Bukiet 21)
By actually attempting to fly during the sacred cleansing activities, he brings upon himself the wrath of the Proszowice community:
… the Proszowicer erupt. Everyone at once – some to me, some to each other, some to themselves, some to God – are declaring, discussing, denying, “Shame!” Forbidden pagan doctrines and the most evil of practices are ascribed to me. From the depths of the crowd I hear the murmurous syllables, “Caballa.” (Bukiet 26)
This way, Bukiet outlines his narrator as the distinguishable representative of a new generation. One that would not stoop easily to established norms and would rather forge a new identity.
However, the boy can never fully shed his Jewish heritage. This becomes more than clear in the story “The Quilt and the Bicycle”. In it, the narrator eagerly exchanges his personal quilt for a bicycle: “… it was like every other quilt in Proszowice, but it was mine – mine before I knew the meaning of ownership, mine before I knew the nature of selfhood, my first possession” (Bukiet 45). This extremely personal object, then, is something of a birthright and is represented as an integral part of its owner. By exchanging it for a bicycle with a gypsy boy, Bukiet's narrator effectively shuns his own culture in search of something new (53). By the end of the story, however, the boy finds himself unable to connect with the fascinating band of travelers: “Immersed in their domestic routine, they no longer had time for a wandering Jew (59). “The quilt and the Bicycle” closes with a line that describes him walking home “wrapped” in his legacy (59). Thus, for all intents and
the boy's visions had taken place long after the Holocaust, Hitler would have been part of them as well.
A close reading of the entirety of Stories of an Imaginary Childhood reveals not only retrospective re-experiencing of trauma, but also manifestations of Holocaust trauma: intrusive imagery from the book's predestined future. To a historically informed post-Holocaust audience, these instances carry a semantic ambiguity. More specifically, I am referring to the various utterances and imagery which are perfectly natural and somewhat unremarkable within the confines of the book's universe, but are haunting and ironic when put into context linked with the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.
For example, in “The Apprentice”, Bukiet's narrator experiences an insatiable and constant hunger, yet, despite the outrageous amount of food being consumed, he maintains a “lean” figure: “My veins stood out like tattoos on my skinny arms. My knees and elbows and all my joints were bony, my motions consequently marionettish” (Bukiet 33). In both Maus and Second Hand Smoke, the tattoos on the forearms of camp prisoners play an important role of marking the survivors as destined to a lifetime of trauma. The bulging veins on the forearm of the Jewish youth in
Proszowice foreshadow the forthcoming Nazi practice of reducing most of the Jewish population of Europe to mere numbers. In that context, the boy's bony structure can be read as a reference to the haunting images of malnourished survivors found by the American GIs upon their arrival at the camps.
added sense of desolateness gives the impression that Proszowice had been recently invaded and evacuated by an awesome force. In a similar vain, the story “Levitation” depicts an unsuspecting goose being drowned by a red-speckled snake. My interpretation on that imagery suggests that it is a reference to the swift sweep of Nazism over Europe: “The snake slid down into the tidal muck, dragging the leg with it, and the goose fell off-balance. Its wings flapped and arched backward, and it called out to its bygone companions with a strident pathetic honk” (Bukiet 22-23).
A more far-fetched, yet plausible, reference to the Holocaust is the character of Shivka – a recently widowed, despotic and spoiled Proszowice resident with an extremely high sense of superiority. The other inhabitants dare not to cross her path as she is incredibly versed when it comes to berating the people around her:
Her fury, we realized, had actually been tampered by the existence of Hirsh David, so that now her eyes flashed a brilliant gypsy indigo, her lips snarled in a carmine slash. Her tiny bust aquiver, hips swathed in armored brocade, she lashed out with the whip of her vitriolic tongue in every direction. She might have been pathetic if she hadn't been so vicious. (Bukiet 81)
This is a possible reference to the powerful rhetoric of Hitler himself. There are other features which she shares with him. Just after finishing up a yet another verbal assault on the protagonist, she encounters a small dog. Her reaction is as unexpected as it is ironic: “Surely, I thought, she was going to bite one of his perky furry ears off, but – miracle of miracles – she fairly gushed, “My, what a cute puppy!” (82). Hitler himself is known to have been an animal lover and a vegetarian. A nurse that had been close to his family recently has claimed that “the death of Hitler's dog Blondi
I interpret all of the aforementioned references to the Holocaust as instances of trauma being “acted out”. The community of Proszowice is reliving, the history of the post-Holocaust world. However, it becomes harder to classify Stories of an Imaginary Childhood as a Holocaust “trauma master narrative” via Jeffrey C. Alexander's prerequisites. As I demonstrated above, the commentary on trauma in the book encompasses a broader issue: antisemitism throughout history. In that respect, the “nature of the pain” during the Spanish Inquisition can be observed on a very few occasions in “Torquemada”: “… beneath my chambers, I can make out the restful undertone of the prisoner's cries” (Bukiet 182). The “nature of the pain” that originates with the Holocaust is limited to the book's historical context: it is up to the reader to decipher the
references to the Holocaust (the ones which I have interpreted as instances of “acting out”). Consequently, the Holocaust pain, although central, is not a clearly defined theme in the book.
Given Bukiet's acknowledgment that the residents of Proszowice are on the verge of the Holocaust, the “nature of the victim” in Stories of an Imaginary Childhood is very clearly defined. To an informed audience, all of those people who comprise the narrator's surrounding are on route to become victims of the Holocaust. The authenticity of this sense can only be enhanced due to the fact that Proszowice is based on an actual settlement that suffered prosecution by the Nazis. Thus, the more familiar the audience is with the book's characters, the more aware it is of the victims' nature.
The “relation of the trauma victim to the wider audience” in Stories of an Imaginary
Childhood is somewhat more vague. With his representation of Proszowice, Bukiet has created a
versatile and colorful community. With that, unfortunately, comes ambiguity:
neither better nor worse than those of their neighbors. The shtetl inhabitants include con men, such as Isaac the Millionaire; prostitutes, including the three-hundred-pound Rebecca, Isaac, the philosophical gravedigger; and the shrewish Shivka Ballet. (Berger 72)
Presented like that, it is hard to tell if the inhabitants of Proszowice fulfill Alexander's criteria for relating to the audience. On the one hand, with their morally ambiguous aspirations, these characters become more real and therefore more accessible. On the other, their fallacies leave little room for any “valued qualities” (Alexander 14).
The “attribution of responsibility” is abundant when it comes to the commentary on the general antisemitism throughout history. I am referring to the naming of all the historical persecutors of Jews mentioned in “Torquemada”. However, there is no possibility to clearly designate the perpetrators of the Holocaust, since the latter has not yet occurred. My
interpretation of Shivka's resemblance to Hitler is far too subjective to be considered as a concrete designation of a responsible agent. After the boy finally comes to his senses he is noticeably distraught, but his father dismisses his worries: “There, there. What harm could possibly come to us in 1928?” (Bukiet 197). His obliviousness is one of the strongest example that symbolizes an unsuspecting Jewish community which is about to enter a storm. His objectively soothing words once again require an audience with a sufficient historical knowledge on the matter in order for this episode to shift from comfort and closure to complete irony. My reading of Bukiet's work does not fit Alexander's idea of a “trauma master narrative” when it comes to representing the
Holocaust, but only because the defined criteria requires conventionality. Stories of an Imaginary
Childhood is a rather unorthodox take on trauma that is equally valid on its own.
literally a collection of stories which – despite being related by time, setting and characters – are relatively independent from one another. Each story is a chapter, and each chapter is an episode from the protagonist's life – moments of significance with lapses in-between. As a result, the disruptions in the narrative of Bukiet's book can be compared to the disruptions found in testimonies of actual Holocaust survivors. Here is a definition of such a mode of trauma recollection:
As a relation to events, testimony seems to be composed of bits and pieces of a memory that has been overwhelmed by occurrences that have not settled into understanding or remembrance, acts that cannot be constructed as knowledge nor assimilated into full cognition, events in excess of our frames of references.
What testimony does not offer is, however, a completed statement, a totalizable account of those events. (Felman 7)
Much like the Holocaust survivors who bare witness to an atrocity, Bukiet's narrator selects only certain parts of his past in the form of a short-story collection and not a completed novel. Indeed, many other Jewish-American works after Stories of an Imaginary Childhood would go ahead and embrace this method of writing: “The interconnected story form has since emerged as a
particularly fruitful aesthetic for subsequent young Jewish writers (Thane Rosenbaum’s Elijah,
Visible, Allegra Goodman’s The Family Markowitz, David Bezmozgis’s Natasha, Ellen Litman’s The Last Chicken in America)...” (Furman). Bukiet is certainly not the first author to introduce the short
story format, but as Furman points out, a lot of other authors adhered to that tendency after Bukiet's book.
Conclusion
In chapter 1, I highlighted the prevailing sense of inadequacy that comes with the title of a second-generation survivor. Artie Spiegelman symbolically never grows up because of lack of
acknowledgment from his father. Artie's plights in life are never notable enough to trigger an emotional response from Vladek. The hardened survivor maintains a passive-aggressive attitude towards his son as if always determined to shame him for not being a Holocaust victim. Not only does Vladek stifle his son with his own legacy, but he also effectively manages to silence Artie's mother – by burning her diaries – who may have had a different perspective on the family's past. This family dynamic eventually leads to Artie's aversion to his father.
Nevertheless, it is curiosity that brings father and son back together. Vladek is more than willing to share his arsenal of stories about the past, and Artie is more than willing to listen. This sets up an environment where Artie has the chance overcome his paternal phobia. Through their sessions, Artie finds an explanation for many of his father's fallacies. This classifies as a form of “working through”. What remains unanswered from the narrative is whether or not he eventually “cures” himself from the grudge he holds against his father. From that I can conclude that Maus represents “working through” as a slow and unstable process that does not guarantee total success.
Interestingly, Artie also proceeds to “act out” on his father's trauma – as seen in “Time Flies” - only after submerging himself deep enough into his father's narrative. From this
like from behind the confines of the camps (hence the title “Diving in Trauma” which I have chosen for that chapter). Because of this, he necessarily has to endure the haunting imagery of the camps in the form of an inherited memory, infused with his own imagination.
In Chapter 2 I studied Second Hand Smoke, where a similar inter-generational dynamic is at play. Rosenbaum's book, however, has the benefit of being a work of fiction. Thus it has freedom to indulge in absurdity and in fact does indulge in absurdity. At a glance, Mila Katz is Vladek Spiegelman multiplied by a double-digit number. Whenever Vladek condescends his son, Mila organizes a street fight for hers (hence the chapter title “Drowning in Trauma”). This absolute abuse, again, leads to the disintegration of a post-Holocaust family unit. Mila and Vladek are both stuck in the past, “acting out” the struggles they have had to endure during the Holocaust. Duncan and Artie, on the other hand, are desperately looking for a way out. Even though Duncan gains distance from his relentless mother as soon as possible, the damage on his psyche has been done. In the outside world where he can try and shake off his traumatic legacy, he instead takes up a job as a Nazi hunter and obsesses over any information available on the Holocaust – he has become a self-perpetuating machine that has been programmed to destroy itself. It is yet another case of inherited trauma. This also highlights LaCapra's notion of “trauma transference”. Should the intensity of Vladek had been equal to that of Mila, Artie would have had to deal with a lot more “acting out”.
Second Hand Smoke, however, also depicts its characters taking on a path of closure and
that sense, the second-generation survivor predicament is not necessarily as dramatic as some works of literature would like it to be.
Chapter 3 deals with the most subjective work of the three sources: Stories of an Imaginary
Childhood. It requires a highly referential reading in order to detect elements that point to the
Holocaust and trauma (hence the less intense title of the chapter, “Droplets of Trauma”).
Nevertheless, as I have demonstrated, the family dynamic of old versus new is, again, prominent in the book's the narrative. The overbearing presence of parents who insist that know better is still present. The imperative to conform and respect tradition recalls scenes from Maus and Second
Hand Smoke where Artie and Duncan respectively are pressured into mourning their dead mothers
even though the do not see themselves ready to do so. In that respect, each of my primary sources suggests that peer pressure coming from the collective plays a major role in complicating an already crippling trauma that has its origins in parent over-presence or parent ostracizing or both.
Stories of an Imaginary Childhood also suggests that trauma is inherited. The boy suffers
nightmares from traumatic events that have occurred generations before him. As a result I can conclude that Bukiet views trauma as an integral part of Jewish identity. Even after attempts to shed the communal legacy, one is bound to “act out” his people's trauma one way or the other.
Essentially, via close reading of my primary resources, I managed to find common traits among them them. In all three of the books there is a presence of inter-generational struggle. The intensity of that struggle varies, but its foundations remain the same: old versus new, traditional versus secular, dominance versus freedom. In all three books, trauma means inheritance and inheritance means further complication.
