What Sets One Apart

I've always wanted to write about the Roaring Twenties. A certain romance surrounds that era: jazz pouring onto the sidewalk late at night, prosperity and parties at every corner. To tell the truth, I don't know much about those times; but the vague idea I had formed based on the sound of Louis Armstrong's jazz, coupled with grainy photographs and bits and pieces from history class, made the time period seem enchanting enough.

Fitzgerald weaves an entirely different picture together, completely shattering my initial conception of the age. From a higher ground, his narrator looks upon the rich with sadness and poorly stifled contempt, like the blue face on the book cover. The roaring parties are, to him, far from tasteful. Where others stare, open-mouthed, at society's glamorous elite, he sees nothing but superficial drunks, exempt from the morals which govern the rest of the world.

Gatsby could not be more different from one of these empty drunks, and yet, on the surface, he is exactly the same. His lavish parties and colossal amounts of money are incredibly characteristic of the Jazz Age. However, unlike the people who appear at his gatherings, he does not give in to greed: he is fueled by love. This is, perhaps, the saddest thing about his predicament. In fact, his situation perfectly embodies the great American tragedy of the decade: status trumped everything. For this reason, love was never enough for Daisy and Gatsby: "she only married [Nick] because [Gatsby] was poor and she was tired of waiting for [him]," (Fitzgerald 130). Money drew her in, and after a time she was comforted by it. Only Gatsby was left to suffer. And yet, instead of withdrawing into himself or leaving the idea of her behind, he prospered. He chose to build himself up for her. This is precisely why Nick holds Gatsby in such high regard.

New York City, 1920

Cat and Maus: A Difference in Viewpoints

The images above are drastically different in their portrayal of the Jews. In Maus, they are furtive mice, entirely at the mercy of the Nazis. Spiegelman's father, a Jew, attracts the reader's sympathy because, while everybody throughout the novel is trying to save himself, he is shown protecting Anja. Furthermore, the constant threat of death hangs over the mice in the form of a trap that is ready to spring at any moment. The shadows that stretch in front of them resemble hanging bodies, with the trap outline as the gallows: one wrong step, and they die. Moreover, there is no cheese or other bait on the trap; in essence, the Jews are not being killed justly, or for any reason that is obvious to the viewer. The large spotlight behind shows the magnitude of the Nazi power that they are up against, as well as the idea that there is nowhere for them to hide, because everywhere there are people watching. Also, the trap is suspended in the air, isolated like the countries that were conquered by Hitler: the only way to save oneself from death in the camps is to die by stepping off of the edge of the trap.

In the rightmost image, the Jew's ugly features, such as his very large nose, thick eyebrows, and eyes that are very close together, leave the embittered viewer to infer that the Jew is as ugly inside as out. He looks more like a monster than a man. Furthermore, the Nazi perspective shows the German civilians as small, helpless victims, entirely at the mercy of the Jew. This is ironic because, in reality, the Nazis decided the fate of the Jews, as shown in the picture at left. The Star of David on the Jew's forehead is there to show that his religion directs his actions, just as today, people blame terrorism on Islam: this surface detail gives the viewer a way to differentiate between a person who may be a risk and one who is not. The image will have made the Nazi viewer feel threatened, and the most common way to deal with a threat is to fight it. Hitler's propaganda is made more effective by the huge toll that World War 1 took on Germany's people; they needed a place to channel their anger, and he successfully united them by giving them an easy target. Because of his manipulation, the image's caption is ironic in that it was, in fact, Hitler's goal to "eat the whole world".

Both images have a dark background, showing that both parties recognized the darkness of the situation, though they did so for drastically different reasons. While one party felt like it was being stifled, the other actually was, in a way that is rather difficult for today's generation to grasp; perhaps this is why Spiegelman draws mice and cats instead of humans. This metaphor distances us from those who lived through the war, while effectively showing the deadly relationship between Jews and Nazis. Spiegelman partly embraces cultural stereotypes, in that that he shows the Jews as mice instead of closely similar rats, to show how hatred could easily warp the harmless into the enemy.

Prompt Perspective

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home...." What if, one day, for millions of people, home didn't exist anymore? Most of us don't explore the infinite possibilities that could occur at any moment, because if we did, we would probably go crazy. But here's one that relates to our current classwork: what if, one day, you ended up looking at pictures of a more familiar, American looking version of Hiroshima? How would you react to the images that would appear if, this past summer, Kim Jong Un had actually gone through with his threats? Would you think, "Thank God it wasn't me"? Would you be torn apart by blind rage, or slumped in unmeasurable sadness? Hopefully none of us are ever put into such a position, despite the constant downward spiral of current worldly events. However, if we were, I know some of us would not want our younger siblings to see these pictures, or maybe we'd even be too repulsed to look at them ourselves (I was a little scared of what I would find when I searched for a picture of Hiroshima). But the fact remains that the events from which these images sprang will have actually transpired, and though critics will argue, no manipulation of the camera will change the violent truth: this is the power of freezing time.

There is no violent photograph currently in existence that cannot teach a person something, no matter his age or beliefs. Visually depicted, violence is undesputably one thing: tragic. There is a reason that the only people who have unconditionally supported violence in the past have been brainwashed, clinically insane, or forced to fight for the survival of entire nations. Would people have left their families to fight in World War 2 if the purpose had been any less urgent? In a way, they had no choice but to fight violence with violence, or fire with fire. Ideas such as this manifest so much power in tragic photographs that those of us who view them cannot simply be "voyeurs" who are incapable of drawing lessons from violence (Sontag 42). Whether or not such images move us to make a change in society or speak out against future evils, we are all forced to learn from them; how could death and suffering not evoke a reaction?

Hiroshima (The New Yorker)

When People Were Animals

On page 42 of Volume 2 of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, Maus, the author is pictured at his desk in the midst of an interview for his popular book. This panel is different from the rest of the novel in that Spiegelman and his interviewers are drawn wearing animal masks—the interviewers are American and German, while Spiegelman is Jewish as a result of widespread suffering that has made this religion and ethnicity the equivalent of a nationality. Masks are worn in this panel because in Art's father's time, religion and nationality meant much more: during the Nazi regime treatment was rigidly based on surface appearance, like where you came from and what you believed in. However, at the time of Art's interview, origin carries less importance in society; character and worth are judged based on the way one acts, and therefore instead of possessing animal heads, the characters wear easily removable masks: at present, one would find it much easier to change his identity than he would during the war.

While they lightly discuss the popularity of Spiegelman's novel, Art and his interviewers are pictured at the top of a mound of dead Jews. The German interviewer is partially buried beneath the bodies, which shows that he is more heavily burdened by their deaths than the Americans, who stand atop them. All three of the interviewers ignore the bodies beneath their feet and instead focus on Spiegelman's newfound fame. This interaction represents the superficiality of people today who cannot relate to the Holocaust; they choose to disregard millions of deaths and worship the opportunity to talk to a famous author instead. Furthermore, Art's desk is literally supported by the dead; he has gained fame from their tragedy, and the flies around his head create a constant buzz in the back of his brain that prevents him from moving past that guilty truth, no matter how much he tries to ignore it. The stripes on his mask represent psychological imprisonment induced by the destruction his family faced, as well as the enormous task he undertook in confining the immense tragedy of uncountable deaths to a small book. Spiegelman's unclear answers and slumped form clearly show that he has no interest in the careless questions of those who value fame over humanity; he is tired of the way modern society approaches the Holocaust and confused about the people's unwillingness to discuss the horrible truth.

Panel 1 p. 42 Maus Vol. 2

The Fight for Respect

As the feminist movement gained traction over the years, it led to the development of many admirable initiatives by uniting those who were tired of conforming to the ridiculous principles that gave women next to no power. In turn, this newfound confidence won American women many rights, from simply wearing pants without receiving judgment to voting for the country's next president. After centuries of being considered second-class citizens, women were no longer ignored.

Despite the numerous fundamental rights women now enjoy, many remaining social injustices must be considered. Until men and women are treated equally, discrimination and ignorance will remain a problem: by ignoring their concerns, men assert that they still have more power than women. In today's age of rapidly advancing technology and seemingly endless possibilities, we must remind ourselves that feminism is still important; the world still houses those who threaten to erase the progress that has been made. Even in today's seemingly morally conscious society, men everywhere are still gaining at the expense of women who are being "Broken with their own tongues", forced to comply in order to provide for themselves (Kingston 47). 

One such businessman in life was Hugh Hefner, whose recent death has put much-needed emphasis on the questionable way he built up his legacy. As founder of Playboy Magazine, he essentially used the feminist movement to promote premarital sex and make money, "But [he] did so within the narrowest of frames: men's views, experiences, interests, biases and desires," (TIME). Ironically, because he was idolized for his progressive way of thinking, Hefner's main crime, shamelessly portraying women as objects whose sole purpose was to please men, was overlooked. The way he treated the girls he employed was far from progressive as well: "the women who lived in the Playboy Mansion were essentially trapped, required to stick to tight curfews, pressured to engage in whatever sex acts their ancient benefactor demanded and plied with drugs...to get them through it," (TIME). Furthermore, the twisted mindset that led to his fame and made his magazine a coveted accessory also gave other men the notion that they could continue to look upon women as sexual objects, ultimately getting rid of whatever respect they had begun to gain for women. The subconscious discrimination initiated by Hefner's magazine led to the promotion of rape culture and misogyny, once again making it extremely difficult for women to be taken seriously.