Like mentioned in previous blog entires: there is a huge historical influence on the story line of Katin's memoir. We can clearly see the hardship that Esther and her daughter went through while traveling across Nazi invaded territory. Its a story of oppression, discrimination, and loneliness. Katin uses this memory of her childhood to create a purpose of awareness, catharsis, inspiration and historical reference.
This memoir is nothing short of an emotional and sentimental story. Like many old war stories, too often personal insight gets lost and the memories fade due to the passing of time. The stories of your grandma or grandpa from the times of the war will only exist as long as they do, or in your memory of them. I think that one purpose of this memoir was partially to fulfill Katin's sense of responsibility to share her mothers story of escaping the Nazi's. Which I think is a common thought amongst individuals who have inspirational war stories - Katin being an aspiring writer, this gave her purpose and subject in which to begin her career. Therefore I think this graphic memoir aids in the preservation of these significant experiences and provide insight into the actual conditions and emotions lived through.
This might have also been therapeutic experience for Katin - a potential way for her to let out any long lasting emotions or dwelling thoughts from this exhausting memoir. Writing helps to heal in soul in someways, and it allows a new kind of processing to take place in the brain.
When you integrate the memories into your regular memory, you can move into a present and future renewed and with more energy–the pain of the past is put into perspective–perhaps not forgotten, but no longer seeming like an immediate and current injury. In some ways, this might also be quite therapeutic for the reading, whether they are able to relate to the story or not, they are able to travel through time into a personal journey through another's memoir.
Here is a link that elaborates on that final thought - memoirs are written for a path of healing and self awareness!
http://memoriesandmemoirs.com/memoir-writing-a-creative-path-to-self-awareness/
Hi Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI think that you have touched on something powerful with the purpose of the book. After reading a lot about where the author was from and about, I got the purpose to be exactly what you set in your last paragraph. It was a way for her to elaborate on her story and get a sense of closure through her emotional mindfield of WW2. This inspired me to look up different ways of learning and critical thinking. Below I have posted a link that you might interesting. It talks about critical reflection and how important it is for healing.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30281715/critical-reflection.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1523229410&Signature=CXXyi7BXlx42LbRb%2BctZ7jtCqxA%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DHow_critical_reflection_triggers_transfo.pdf