Ethical form: representation, identity, and responsibiltiy in A.M. Klein's The Second Scroll and Art Spiegelman's Maus

Abstract

The event of the Holocaust persistently defies closure. As the years pass away from that event, Holocaust narratives remain a crucial agent of remembrance. A.M. Klein's novel The Second Scroll (1948) and Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus (1980-1991) add to the rich body of Holocaust literature in unique ways. Both writers create hybridized forms of fiction through which to represent the Holocaust and its resultant emotional effects, and both assume a set of ethical responsibilities that are informed by their stylistic choices. Bringing Levinas' theory of ethical obligations to the Other to bear directly on the works of Klein and Spiegelman, this thesis shows that each writer attempts, as much as possible, to write in the service of truth and remembrance. In their prose experiments, Klein and Spiegelman repeatedly come face-to-face with the Other. The dynamic relationship between the formal properties of the texts and the authors' responsibilities to their projects creates an ethical, though not entirely resolved, discourse of meaning around the challenge of representing the Holocaust.