New Generations (New Girl)

It's inevitable that as stories, morals, and life lessons are passed down generation after generation, things will be omitted, lost in translation, and the moral of the story will fall on deaf ears....leaving an ignorance present among younger generations.

I can't begin to imagine the sacrifices my parents had to make in order to immigrate to a new country in which neither of them had any connections, one that had many cultural and language barriers they are still overcoming to date.  When they first immigrated and started at the bottom rung of the social ladder, they made less than a tenth of what they make now (while still supporting the costs of getting grad school degrees).  They became frugal... a trait they haven't shaken since, even after moving to upper-middle class incomes.  I'll still poke fun at the paper bags they use instead of buying lunch bags, or the fact that my dad would rather do his own oil changes.  I can attest to this ignorance--because I am ignorant in this respect.  I don't understand that my parents had learned to adapt, that they learned to save in order to survive.  I don't understand what they had to do to live on minimal incomes compounded with long hours of studying.  I don't understand.  Perhaps this ignorance is a defense mechanism, perhaps we don't want to know others' struggles, so we keep ourselves from doing so. 

This generational ignorance is similar to that portrayed in Spiegelman's graphic novel, Maus when he makes it clear that Artie doesn't quite absorb the horrors of the Holocaust that Vladek did.  The maggots borne off of the dead Jewish people are representative of the lessons left by the Holocaust...something that younger generations don't always pay attention to.  These same flies are shown as killed off by Artie pages later (his use of bug spray drawing parallels the Nazi gassing practices), symbolizing the inability of younger generations to empathize with Holocaust victims.

Art also shows his generation's ignorance through smoking.  Although smoke holds an unpleasant connotation in Vladek's mind, Art smokes in front of him nonetheless, not considering its psychological effects on his father.  Additionally, Art criticizes his father for his unwillingness to waste and his extreme budgeting, failing to recognize that the Holocaust made Vladek like this, that he survived only by utilizing these skills.

  

The Holocaust was a tragedy few can even begin to grasp, let alone fully comprehend, and although Maus reveals aspects of living as a Jewish person in Nazi Europe, it cannot relay it all.  Much of the Holocaust will forever be lost, as words alone (or words with pictures) are not adequate to describe the magnitude of grief, loss, and pain that is the Holocaust.  Its essence has long been burned (with the bodies and diaries of the victims alike), its smoke long dissipated and forgotten.  No matter how hard our generation attempts to fathom what exactly Holocaust victims went through, we'll never fully understand; we'll always live in a generational ignorance.