13. In Chapter 9, “Enter My Blue Fairy Godmother . . .,” Campbell reports that he could not claim to hate the Nazis because he “knew them too well as people” (36). Consider this claim in light of your experience reading imaginative literature. Some people say that much of the value of studying literature is that it widens a reader’s circle of empathy. Literature allows a reader to see the world from someone else’s perspective and gain a greater understanding of the emotional world someone else inhabits. It is easy to see why “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes” might be an enlightening vicarious experience, but is there a danger in it as well? Can literature encourage us to sympathize with the wrong people? Does knowing the Nazis “as people” limit our ability to hate them? Does limiting our ability to hate them limit our ability to respond to them appropriately (violently)?
Should we ever shun efforts to humanize villains?
Ever see the film
Max (2002)? Some critics complained that it humanizes Hitler . .
.
I personally love the fact that literature gives people the ability to view situations or people in a different perspective than their own. But for me,knowing the Nazis as "people" and not just villains wouldn't change how wrong I thought their actions were or any hate or dislike I felt towards them. In my opinion, knowing the Nazis personally wouldn't limit my ability to hate, it's just simply another side to the story.
ReplyDeleteJust like Kaitlyn said, I too believe that knowing the Nazis as people wouldn't change how wrong I thought their actions were. Although in some books I read there have been characters I did not appreciate because of their wrongful actions. But as I continued to read the books I began to know them as people and did care for them to an extent. Because of the new empathy I developed for them, whenever the characters or even people in real life did the wrongful actions, I could not look down upon them for it as much as I did before. Though this was not any danger to me, in Campbell's situation it was incredibly dangerous because the Nazis were involved with him. Just like in my experiences with "walking in people's shoes" from the books I have read, many of us begin to sympathize with all people, even those who are in the wrong. But the challenge is to distinguish who we should empathize with and treat those who don't deserve our sympathy the same way we would before we develop any empathy for them.
ReplyDelete“Does knowing the Nazis “as people” limit our ability to hate them?”
ReplyDeleteThis question intrigued me. Mother Night challenged my thinking, and I enjoyed it immensely. When I travelled to Washington D.C. this summer, I went to the Holocaust Museum. It was exciting to see the special exhibit about the propaganda the Nazis used to persuade public opinion. I read all about Campbell’s boss Joesph Goebbels, and I was able to see the book come alive. But the one question I came away with from the museum was, “How can humankind be ready to hate others so quickly?”
The beauty of literature is that we can empathize and understand other humans and their actions better. I also believe that literature opens our minds so that we are more open to other cultures and people, and we learn to never hate. That was the danger of the Nazis. They hated with vigor and passion and that led to destruction. They NEVER empathized with their “enemies.” Literature shows us to hate the ACTIONS not the people. Hate drove the Nazis to inhuman actions. Six million Jews died because of their hate. I don’t think we should shun efforts to humanize villains. I think that is saying villains aren’t humans. If we hate the villain’s actions and not the villain, then we are spurred on to good actions that stop the villain’s actions. So I think it is so important that literature and information continue to challenge us and encourage us to empathize with others so that hate will never enter our hearts. I hope literature will continue to push us to understand all people and their actions, so that we ourselves can understand humanity better.
I share the love of literature’s ability to allow us to see another side of the story described by Kaitlyn Riddle, and I agree that knowing them as people would not change my view on their actions. However, we assume that all Nazis stood for all the same ideas Hitler imposed on Germany and the lands conquered under him. To the contrary, people such as Oskar Schindler used their party affiliation to save lives during the war. I believe literature’s ability to inform us or give deeper insight as to why a person acts villainously is something to be appreciated and studied. This implies that we should not shun efforts to humanize villains, but we should try and understand them, if only to better understand ourselves through the process.
ReplyDelete~Catherine Melton
I think most people retain the ability to hate even after understanding. It is different from situation to situation, but in this case, even though we see some of their thought processes, and perhaps begin to understand why some Nazis thought their actions were appropriate, we still realize that what they did was horrendous. It varies greatly from case to case. For instance, I don’t hate the fictional character of Campbell, because I see his struggles. However, I read a really interesting book, The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust. It explores Heinrich Himmler’s theories about race and history and his work to prove those ideas. While the book provides insight into his mind and why he thought the things he did, it doesn’t make me like him or understand how he could have carried out his horrendous crimes. His work contributed greatly, if not directly, to the deaths of many, many people. I cannot sympathize with him. I do think it is very important to try to understand the thoughts of people like him, to recognize how they thought and what they thought they were doing, so we can understand how everything went so terribly wrong. I do not think that understanding necessarily causes sympathy.
ReplyDeleteWell, as with any conflict, we have to remember that there are two sides to the coin.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to sound like I support the Nazi's ideas, but we have to consider that they didn't attempt to wipe out the Jews just because it sounded like fun. They believed they had legitimate reasons for what they did, just like before the Civil War, we believed we had legitimate reasons for slavery. Yeah, in both instances the actions were terrible, but nobody just woke up one day and said "Hey, guys, let's start killing millions of people. Sounds like a hoot, right?"
So, when I think about it that way, I can understand -why- the Nazis did what they did, but that doesn't mean I sympathize with them. I just don't blindly hate them.