My mind and memory: an exploration of history, narrative, and story in the work of Primo Levi and Art Spiegelman

This thesis attempts to frame the fundamentals by which we tell and preserve history, narrative, and story. The exploration seeks to understand the necessity and complexity of the preservation of memory and of narrative and story. Culture may be understood as a collection of narratives. Understanding ourselves requires an understanding of how and why we create history, narrative, and story. Two Holocaust narratives of cultural and literary importance are investigated – Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Two different ways of telling and preserving stories about the Holocaust have had great impact upon Cultural and Holocaust studies, these stories have raised lasting questions on morals and ethics. By framing these works within my own narrative, and narrative theory, I have attempted to personalize and understand the construction of narrative and the relationship between writer/artist, and memory, and the larger relationship to history, narrative, and story.