Maus - Art Spiegelman

I love, love, love Maus!  Such an amazing story of pain, of terror, of suffering, of hurt but also of resistance, persistance, love, fellowship amd survival.
Anja's suicide haunts me...  Why did she end her own life after surviving such a horrific ordeal during WWII?  Vladek is portrayed as a miserable man.  Mala thinks Anja must have been a saint to have tolerated Vladek.  Yet Vladek seems to have been a very loving partner in his narratives to Artie.  We will never know since Anja didn't leave a note.  Somehow, I feel her grief and her family's grief in dealing with her death - powerful, powerful stuff considering that the mice in the book does not show much expression other than raised or furrowed eyebrows.
What a great loss that Anja's journals were destroyed.  I deeply want to hear her voice, her story.

Keeping Vladek's voice (in his own broken English) is perfect - it captures his personality more.
Is Vladek such a miserable person because of his experience in the holocaust?  Was he a more likeable person previously?  Other survivors have not turned out as he has.  Each individual experiences trauma different and thus also reconciles them differently.
"I'm not going to die, and I won't die here!  I want to be treated like a human being." (Maus I: 54)  Would this make others think about the suffering of animals in captivity by humans like I do?
"But you have to struggle for life!" (Maus I: 122) - life is not just happiness, it also includes sadness, challenges and struggles - we may thankfully not eperience the holocaust but there are struggles nonetheless, more for some than others.
Survival for Vladek was due to his quick intelligence/wit, ability to adapt as various professions or to mask as those professionals, his ability to pose as a German and a Jew (it sounds like Anja was too Jewish-looking to pass as a different ethnicity/nationality) but it was due to a lot of luck.
In dire situations, human-animals and I am sure other animals resort to selfish acts for self-preseverance but there is also many stories of love, sharing, caring, suffering for others, risking one's lives for others.  We are capable of 'evil' but also of 'good'.
The killing/extinction of flies with bug spray while talking about Auschwitz (Maus II: 74) is a little ironic if you ask me.
"How amazing it is that a human being reacts the same like this neighbour's dog" (Maus II: 82) - all sentient beings (human-animals and non-human-animals) are capable of suffering, pain and have a desire to live.
Train for cattle to cattle human-animals to death.  Piled up high like 'things' only (Maus II: 85). Why does this horrify us while we justify this cruelty when it comes to food-animals?  Why is the human-animal so short-sighted in their ability to empathize with others?
The mice drawings, their faces specifically remind me physically of my pup's face which perhaps moves me even more.
Art Spiegelman does not tell us too much about himself other than his tensed relationship with his father, mother and ghost brother, Richieu.
Still amazed at how powerful the medium of comic can be - this is inspiring to me!

The Tin Flute - Gabrielle Roy

1. A pretty anti-war theme riding through this novel.  The futility of war and the dangers of overzealous nationalism/patriotism.  Each side geared up to hate the other - for what?  For a paycheque.  This was true during the WWII and it still is today.  Poor Americans are generally the ones who join the military and get deployed to dangerous zones to protect the empire - only today, they masquerade as 'peacekeepers'.  I love the social commentary on draft dodgers vs. pacifists.
2. Women seem to do the majority of the work (paid and unpaid) in the Lacasse household.  The men can only support their family when the enlist in the army.  Families torn apart for the others can live.  Futility of war.  Who really wins?  Takes me back to Marcus Aurelis - defend the empire for what?  For whom?  Is it really worth so many innocent lives tortured and lost?
3. Sacrifice as an act of love.  Emmanuel for Florentine.  Azarius for his wife and family.  Eugene for his mother and family.
4. Jean Lévesque striving for something better than his childhood riddled with poverty - nothing wrong with this - we all want to be able to live a comfortable life but I think we mustn't forget our roots either.  He is of the higher working class striving to be in the upper class.  He is trying too hard to escape his poverty and alienates those around him and he, denying himself love and happiness.
5. Rose-Anna reminds me of my own grandmother and her poverty during WWII also.  My grandmother also ate less so the rest of the family can eat.  The other children of my grandmother were malnourished in their younger days during the war and so they are the smallest children of the lot of nine children.  The role of housewife, mother and wife is a difficult one.    Under-appreciated unpaid work, even still today.
6. At what breaking point do we break our pride so we can live?  I know I don't lack the pride to take on a 'lesser' job if I had to.  I don't look down on these professions and so it doesn't seem demeaning to me, rather it is a necessary step to being to support myself but perhaps this is easy for me to say when I have a better way 'out' than the characters in Roy's novel.

Interesting that M levels a criticism against Roy in that her characters in dire poverty seem to lack agency and reflection.  I certainly agree with M's assessment but I do not generally critize an author of fiction on her characters.  I may critique the characters but not necessarily the author.  The novel/work of art is what it is and we all intepret it in different ways.  We will never really know the intent of the author.  We can speculate and theorize until we are blue in the face.  For me, The Tin Flute is a novel with an anti-war message, highlighting the desparation of men in dire poverty and its connection to war.

Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood

Looooooooove Goodbye to Berlin!  Someday, I'll get around to reading the first novella, Mr. Norris Changes Train in Berlin Stories as well.  Some random thoughts:
1. Interesting how the narration is from an 'objective' point of view.  I use 'objective' loosely since Isherwood (the character) does make subjective comments on the other characters but remains distant at the same time. 
2. The 'other' is celebrated (the 'other' being the English/Isherwood) - reminds me of my time in Japan where you are considered 'special' because of your western status.
3. The 'other' hangs out with each other and is in many ways more accepting of one another - e.g. female sex workers and gay males.
4. Interesting that the sanitorium is an escape haven for Mrs. Nowak - perhaps speaking to the starkness of life as the caretaker of children that in her mind contribute little to the family and society.
5. Strange interdependence of various characters - absurdity of being human?
6. Leaving behind those you cannot help (the Germans during Nazi/wartime Berlin) - feelings of guilt?  Loyalty?  Reminds me of the disasters at Fukushima/Tohoku and the blaming of foreigners who left when the going got rough...  The story ends abruptly - too painful to think about what happened to the various characters?  Isherwood can leave Berlin - he was there as a foreigner and has the privilege to leave but many of the characters did not.
7.  Adaptation - the landlady, Frl. Schroeder adapts to Nazi Germany.  As Isherwood notes, the people will remain in Berlin regardless of which government is in power.  But isn't this adaptation dangerous?  It is part of a survival strategy but at what cost?  Do we agree to fascism and genocide?

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

So much overlap with some of the other texts we've been reading!  Human nature is the same regardless of where and when the people are from.

natural rhythm
"To work against one another therefore is to oppose Nature, and to be vexed with another or to turn away from him is to tend to antagonism." (10)
This reminds me of Mencius' ideals on maintaining social harmony and going with the universe's natural rhythm.

"Be sober without effort." (28) - wu wei!

one life to live, with purpose
We only have one life to live, it may be brief, it may be long so live it to its fullest.  Live in the present moment.  Live is ephemeral (30). Very much based in materialism like Lucretis.

reason and passion
Our ability to reason distinguishes us from animals.  We use reason to control our passions.  Reason creates virtue.  Passions/desires like wealth, power, material things are fleeting and unimportant.  Self control is key. MA very methodically reasons out that the processes in life like aging, death, etc. are inevitable and so we should accept them instead of fighting or fearing them (very Epicurean (Lucretius)) - mitigating anxiety and fear in life.  Disease, aging, etc. neither good nor evil.  It is just part of the natural rhythm of life.  Celebrates the rhythms of life.

oneness with the universe/duties
We are all interconnected to all humans and the whole universe.  We have social duties to each other and thus we must work with each other.  We must do our assigned duties in life.  Very much like Krishna's counsel.  Perhaps this is MA's way of reconciling all the war that has been going on under his reign. (What of Obama in today's context?)

One consciousness (31) - very much Krishna ("I am in everything").  A very Hindu/Buddhist idea in which the interconnectedness of life is emphasized - perhaps a teaching on why we should respect our environment instead of conquering it.

way of life
Philosophy guides you life but you must have the will (heart - Mencius) to conduct action.  Philosophy as a way of life (a lifelong commitment).  look within when you are not on the right path.  do not worry about what others think, rather observe and correct yourself (through reason).  Must calm, give peace to mind, not body.  Look to positive examples for inspiration (53).

divinity
"And this deity is each man's mind and reason" (41) - like Krishna or the 'Buddha within'.  The concept of divinity in Meditations appears less mystical than that in Hinduism or Buddhism.  I think each concept conveys the same ideas, just in different forms.

materialism
Reasoning must be grounded in empiricism/facts (45) and logic (70). Change is constant and normal (59).

It's interesting that Nixon and Obama were mentioned in class.  Perhaps I am cynical..  While I 'get it' that Aurelius did not seem to be a stereotypical power hungry ruler nor was he born into power. None the less, he was a ruler and he chose a life of the elites.  He chose to defend the Roman empire, to war with other empires seeking to maintain or expand their territories.  Mencius defends a punitive war and this seems to be the case for Aurelius.  As such, Aurelius is seen to be doing his necessary duties to his kingdom yet at the same time, was war/defence really the necessary option?  Did he really have to send thousands of men to die to uphold an empire?  Were other solutions not possible?  Did he contemplate the ethics of him defending territories that were 'won' through expansionist violence?  I am asking rhetorical questions, of course... and I speak from a pacifist point of view.  But I can't help but wonder, did Aurelius really want to be a philosopher but landed in the role of a warring emperor instead?  I get the sense that this may be partially true and his writings may have scribed the way they were so that he would be remembered as a good philosopher rather than as an effective ruler.

Lysistrata

A very interesting text with an anti-war message but also with unusual gender roles.  On the one hand, women perform gender by donning feminine clothing,  depilating themselves but on the other hand, women are also showed to be sexual beings with needs, a trait more often associated with men.

Lysistrata's role is very much like that of an army sergeant leading a war - keeping the men's or in this case, the women's strength and morale up, plotting a winning strategy and leading the women to the "war" of abstinence.  In this case however, the ends is ceasefire, peace and the safe return of their male loved ones - sons, husbands, brothers and fathers.

Women are portrayed as passionate when they 'war' against their husbands yet when men war against another, no such proclamation is made.  Men are portrayed as 'reason'.  Yet at the same time, Lysistrata is portrayed as 'reason' - she is the one who very strategically and effectively stopped the war and to resume the local economy and bring male loved ones home.  Men in this sense can thus be viewed as 'passionate' and blinded by war efforts.

Women's role reversal = not portrayed as completely passive characters, not completely passionate - able to hold desire of sex from men.

Lysistrata critiques the financial and non-financial losses of war and thus points to the futility of war.

Afterclass thoughts: I hadn't given much thought that this text lacks interfering gods and that humans are taking control of their own affairs.  Or that this text may be a commentary of the power of sexual desire have over humans.

Bhagavad Gita

The dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna revolves around the dilemma of 'to war or not to war' against his kinship.  Krishna counsels Arjuna to perform his duties as a warrior (reflecting the importance of maintaining duties are per assigned roles within the caste system) over his duties over familial ties.

My interpretation of the Gita is that it is a story of how to cope with internal dilemmas, of managing passion and reason, of managing suffering (grief, anxiety, making difficult moral decisions, etc.).  Krishna argues that passion (in this context, Krishna's moral dilemma) is fleeting (33).  To overcome 'passion' through discipline is to achieve inner peace.

"Arjuna, you must learn to endure
fleeting things - they come and go!
When these cannot torment a man,
when suffering and joy are equal
for him and he has courage,
he is fit for immortality." (33)

Without attachment to desire or to fruits of action, one can attain inner peace/transcendence/enlightenment (immortality) (40-41) thus reducing/removing suffering (44-46).

I do not read 'immortality' literally, rather to me, it denotes inner peace.  Longing/desire/attachment causes self-inflicted suffering.  To let go of these attachments is to relieve suffering and also to understand that pain, suffering, happiness and all of life is ephemeral.

Krishna points to the illusion of self (individuality/ego) (47),  and notes the unity or connectedness of all life/nature/creatures (69).

"he sees the self in all creatures
and all creatures in the self.
[...]
I exist in all creatures,
so the disciplined man devoyed to me
grasps the oneness of life;
wherever he is, he is in me. (69)

When one lets go of the self/ego/individual, one affirms the ephemeral nature of life and gains greater respect for our surroundings and the other creatures around us.  I am not "me", rather I am also the water I drink, the air I breathe, the plants I eat, etc.  Everything is interconnected (which is how I read Krishna's statement of "I am in everything").  Krishna's teaching in this text is very Buddhist in its core.

There are various ways to achieve inner peace (e.g. meditation, yoga).

After class thoughts: I do not see reaching inner peace/nirvana so much as a desire, rather it speaks of a continuing process to attain this state of mind.  I do not think it is possible to be in nirvana 24/7.  We are human and we feel anger, pain, happiness, jealousy, etc.  To detach from the emotions that cause us psychic and in turn real physical pain (e.g. heartache), that is to attempt to reach nirvana through meditation, yoga, etc. is a coping mechanism to deal with those painful emotions.

Bhagavad Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War
Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller (2004) Bantham Books.