Overlap of History and Literature

¶ … Overlap of History and Literature

World War II and the era which surrounded it would produce momentous and cataclysmic change on a global scale. Whole states expanded, collapsed, emerged and disappeared in the midst of a military conflict which would ultimately engulf all inhabited continents. As these enormous and terrible events impacted the world on a whole, infinite stories of individual struggle also developed. The incredibly fertile body of literary material produced from these individual struggles stands today as one of the lasting collective documents to a time that humanitarian responsibility demands we never forget. Though war is often seen through history's eyes as sweeping, recalibrating political events, the literature produced in its aftermath is often most valuable in evoking some sense of the emotional and psychological toll levied by war. Here, in Elie Wiesel's Night (1960) and Kazuo Ishiguro's an Artist in the Floating World (1986), two writers use the same historical backdrop in order to recount two dramatically different human experiences.

In both is a commonality that is frequently seen in all manner of historically-driven narrative. Namely, in both, we find a character who is largely moved by the events around him rather than the reverse. This is frequently a feature found in the overlap between history and literature and denotes the experience of being made to bend to forces far larger than one's self. In the case of Ishiguro's work, Masuji Ono is an artist who has allowed himself to become a vessel for the propaganda of Japanese fascism. His story, therefore, occurs in to phases, neither of which finds him very much in control of his fate. In the first phase, Ono is an artist of much acclaim, largely by virtue of his commitment to a draconian ruling political and cultural power. The second phase finds Ono, by this same virtue, reviled by a post-war leftist authority. His acclaim and his isolation respectively show the artist as a channel for a moment in Japanese history and as a target for the backlash against this moment.

In Wiesel, we find a great deal more will power and individuality. Yet, we find that the historical circumstances for the subject and his family are yet that much more irresistible. A victim of the German-perpetrated Holocaust, Wiesel describes the experience of being moved by history as one which came about quite unexpectedly. Their subterfuge, Wiesel shows in his text, would be a valuable tactic for the Nazis as they gradually entrenched themselves, in preparation for the eventual deportation and wholesale murder of the Jews. As Wiesel explains it, "the Germans were already in town, the Fascists were already in power, the verdict had already been pronounced, yet the Jews of Sighet continued to smile." (Wiesel, 7-8) His family and his neighbors were ultimately vulnerable to the mass herding and encampment of the Jews because they, like millions of others, doubted that the power afforded to the Nazi government could possibly become engorged to the extent and to the severity that it would. A great feat of illusion often perpetrated on the behalf of totalitarian governments, allowing proud families like the Wiesels to become victims of history.