Why Does Memory Sometimes Fail

In both "Maus" by Art Spiegelman and "Postmodernism for Beginners" by Jim Powell, the horrors and atrocities of the Holocaust and Auschwitz are discussed.  Powell states that "to reduce the degradation, death and stench to a concept-drowns out the screams."  Powell says this to show that no matter how hard we try to use memory to remember the events of the Holocaust, the magnitude of this tragedy can never be truly comprehended by those who have not experienced it firsthand.  This is mainly because it is nearly impossible to imagine the level of trauma that each of your senses would have to be put through when subjected to that horror.  The indescribable stench of death, the sounds of your fellow people being subjected to torture and death, the feel of the punishment from the Nazi soldiers, the taste of blood and dirt in your mouth as you are worked to death, and the sight of the high fences and the guards that signal to you that you will probably never be able to escape this hell.  Just saying these words may already sound bad, but it pales in comparison to the actual event.  This is where "Maus" comes in.  "Maus" being a graphic novel helps to slightly bridge the gap left by only memory and imagination.  The graphics shown help by adding the sense of sight into your imagination.  The novel shows you the events of the characters leading up to their sentence in Auschwitz and even tries to show you just how bad it really was there.  These images depicted by Spiegelman are used to evoke some of the emotion lost by traditional, only text storytelling.  The graphic novel still can't fully show you the horrific events of Auschwitz, but that may be a good things because if they could, you may start to suffer from PTSD after reading Spiegelman's work.