Screams hidden behind locked doors: How Yann Martel and Art Spiegelman use Animals in their Treatment of the Holocaust

Abstract

I discuss the choices Art Spiegelman and Yann Martel have made regarding their treatment of animals and the Holocaust in Maus and Beatrice and Virgil, respectively. Using David’s description of ‘creatures whose screams are hidden behind locked doors’, I split my analyses into three sections: ‘Identification’ where I discuss the problems with identifying with victims of the Holocaust whose traumatic memories remain sealed ‘behind locked doors’, unable to be articulated; ‘(In)articulation’, where I draw upon Lyotard’s ‘differend’ as that which needs to be articulated but cannot (yet) be (these are the ‘screams hidden’ of unspeakable suffering); and ‘Suffering’, where I draw all three sections together and ask how and why both authors have used animals to depict suffering, but also whether they have considered the ongoing suffering of the animals that stand outside of the metaphors and allegories of literature.