Monday, October 13, 2014

Question Commander - Week 1 - Giulia D.

Question Commander
Maus & Persepolis
Week 1
Giulia Di Bella


Why was there so much hatred between the “cats" and the “mice"?

I believe there was this big confront between the Nazis and the Jews because they thought they were superior. Although the “cats" were not superior from the “mice”, they strongly insisted that they were. By better, they meant something related to race. The Nazis, back then, thought that their race was pure, while the mice were just a sub race. In other words, the Nazis were from a superior race, in contrast to the Jewish, who were from an inferior race. That’s what they believed in. That’s what they meant by “better”. That’s what they saw as a sin from the Jews, or mice. Anyone that was not "pure blooded”, should be extinct from the world. This leads to my second question:

2. Why did the cats or Nazis kill only the mice or Jews if they thought that only their race was pure and accepted? Why not kill the other races?

The cats (Nazis), strongly believed that they were the only pure race on earth, and did not admit or tolerate any other besides theirs. Taking that in consideration, they had a terrible opinion and action of killing all the mice (Jews) because they were not of pure blood. Then here comes my question: If they believed that their race was the only pure one in the world, then how come they didn’t end up killing all the other ones? It’s insane to imagine what would have happened if the cats (Hitler) had won that war, but imagine if they did. What would be their next step? Killing another race? Worse. Killing all the other races? If he believed that only his race was pure and accepted by God, from what I understand, he would have tried to kill all the other races if he had won the war. Well, thank God he didn’t, but from what I get as an answer to this question is: Hitler (cats) only didn’t kill all the other races because they lost the war, and after that everything settled down. The few Jews that survived became free and at last, independent. But after all this discussion I still remain with a predominant question: Why the Jews? Why did Hitler start by the Jews? Well, I believe that that would be something left handling in the air. 

3. Is there space today for such a racial issue, as this one? 

In my opinion, yes, it exists today; here are two examples: The Apartheid maintained Nelson Mandela in jail for 25 years for the same racial issue. (He fought for a human right.) Is it over today? No. And there is also, the economical and racial dilema between the USA and the Arab “terrorists" and vice versa. Problems like these, happen all over the world, they just don’t seem to stop. So is there space for another one like this one, no doubt; yes. In fact, there has been so many that have happened or that are happening currently today. These two example I mentioned earlier, prove my point. In addition, here are some other racial issues: the country subdivision of Russia, the Indian division for racial causes (Pakistan and India separation), and the Klu-klux (KKK) clan, as one must have heard before.


 
Times of India. Digital image. India-Pakistan. N.p., 8 July 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/thumb/msid-5925154,width-300,resizemode-4/India-Pakistan.jpg>.



CoolForCatSuk. Digital image. Mouse in Mouth. N.p., 8 Jan. 2013. Web. 8 Oct. 2014. <http://coolforcatsuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mouse-in-mouth-8-AMD-682x1024-199x300.jpg>.

3 comments:

  1. Great job Giulia!

    I think your post was great. It really helped me understand the story better. I think all your questions were great and you answers were complete. The only criticism I have is that you could've tried to link the pictures to the text a little more. I just feel that they're only there to look pretty, when they could be there to help readers further understand the topic. Other than that, I loved your post. I think question 2 was the best, and I wish we could answer why Hitler chose the Jews and not any other race. Thank you for clarifying why all the other races weren't yet exterminated, though.

    That was a great post, Gulia. Well done

    -Juliana

    ReplyDelete
  2. Giulia,
    We talked a lot about this in class, on how different characters correspond to different animals. I like how you talked about the rivalry between cats and mice. You can see that Art wrote it being cats and mice, not cats and dogs. Mice have absolutely no change against cats they are much weaker and smaller. It is all a metaphor so people can add their own opinions on while reading. Thank you for boosting my thinking.
    -Julianna

    ReplyDelete
  3. For the first question, I think that there is so much hatred between mice and cat, because the cat wants to eat, and mice are its lunch. So just like the mice that get killed, the Jews get killed, so the Nazis sort of wipe them out. For the second question, I think that the reason they only killed Jews, is that they thought that the Jews were the most dangerous race against them, so that if they wiped out the Jews, they would thrive, because no other race would be there to confront them. I think that today this racial issue might be able to happen, but it depends on the leaders that emerge from these groups, because things like this can happen, if the leader has the will to do this, it just might happen.

    ReplyDelete