Memories

After reading Maus, and understanding the exile Vladek suffered, the article: Projected Memories by Marianne Hirsch was easily connected. Both Vladek and the people in Hirsch’s article seemingly find it difficult fitting into the contemporary world, coming from a past that was completely excruciating and inhumane. Hirsch presents many different holocaust stories, and after having discussed the horrors of the holocaust in class and different types of exile a person like Vladek suffered, Hirsch’s readings seemed just as surreal- all facing many different realities between past and present that plague their lives.
In the quote: “The child who lives is crowded out by the children who were killed, the mother who lives, by the mother who was executed; their lives must take their shape in relation to the murderous breaks in these other, past, lives” (Hirsch 266). The exile felt between Lorie and her mother are because of their past that distorts their reality. Hirsch also explains the cultural memory that combines personal memory of a person with a shared history- so not only do these survivors of the holocaust remember their own suffering, the wide world of so many other person’s pasts become apart of theirs too, exiling them even further.