Are words and pictures enough ?

One of the most fascinating things about the graphic novel MAUS is the way that the words and images work together. The support each other. Neither one is bigger than the other. They use one another and build off of one another’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s truly amazing what kind of art can form from something as simple as words and images. The things that images can’t say, words speak. The things that words can’t show, pictures depict.

In graphic novels, it’s vital that the pictures and text work together, If there is too much text and not enough pictures, the graphic novel loses the “graphic” and just becomes “novel. On the other hand, if there is not enough text, the images become more open to interpretation and the author's message or voice might get lost in translation.  

Although we’d like to think that there is a simple, perfect solution to everything. We’d like to be able to store everything in nice, neat boxes and square them away. But with a topic like the Holocaust, there is no “perfect” or “neat” way to even begin to explain what happened, let alone try to understand what those involved felt. There is no way for a human being to imagine what it was like unless they were there. So then the argument of “are pictures and images enough?” presents itself. I honestly don’t think so. I don’t believe images and words can even begin to open up our minds to understand what took place and to relate.

Despite that, I don’t want to be able to relate. If every human whent through the awful things that the Jews went through during the Holocaust, our sense of normalcy  would we off. We would see the world differently, in a darker and less hopeful way.  We shouldn’t wish to have gone through their pain, that’s ignorant. At the same time, we can’t turn a blind eye and just forget about the past. For now, pictures and images will have to do. We have to listen to the what they are trying to illustrate and make sure that that level of hate and inhumane actions are never spread to that extent ever again.