The Last Of The Just And The Shoah Essay

The Holocaust, and the Shoah specifically, blurred the definition of who was considered as people, and altered the way the outside world viewed the Jews. Andre Schwarz-Bart’s The Last of the Just and Art Spiegelman’s Maus I and Maus II focuses on the images of the different types of “insect” and other types of degrading animal images of the Jews during the Shoah. By drawing upon Edmund Russell’s article and Howard Stein’s article, one can come to understand how the portrayal of Jews as either animals or insects, and the reactions of those persecuted in the Shoah have been portrayed within the two novels. Thus, it is when an individual distances themselves away from their view as an “insect” or the identity of animals that an individual is able to find the strength to cope, and survive in difficult tragedies.

According to Edmund Russell in an article titled, “Speaking of Annihilation: Mobilizing for War Against Human and Insect Enemies,” the Shoah was not only horrendous because of the enormity of deaths and sufferings that were incurred, but that people were perceived to be “half-human, half-insect creatures” (Russell 1505). Noticing the way people were portrayed as insects allowed the war to change the perspectives of society, and vice versa, Russell argues, “metaphors shaped human understanding of the material world and the material world shaped metaphors,” (Russell 1510). Therefore the metaphor of the Jews as insects or animals only propelled the fallacious belief that the Jewish population should be exterminated because there was it was a prevailing belief that Jews are a burden to society rather than a benefit for society to accept.

From the very onset of the novel, The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart uses insect imagery a...

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...the ones condemned, where many are faced to grapple with the fighting or running away mentality. For many, this change is merely a mindset as many Jews internalized and consequently held the anti-Semitic identities that plagued them. However, through the stories of Ernie and Vladek, one can see the ways that animal and insect imagery helps the Jews to survive In situations like the Shoah, victims can easily fall victim to their persecutors’ dehumanized conception of their self-worth, to stop fighting when they feel like there is no opportunity to escape. As seen in both The Last of the Just and Maus I and Maus II, Ernie and Vladek both recognize that whatever actions they choose, whether they may be death, or survival, by realizing the power of his own identity, they are no longer accepting the role as a dehumanized creature, and instead, emerging as victorious.