The author adopts the form of cartoon to express the heavy and depressing topic of the second world war, so that readers of all ages can get information from it and reduce the depressing degree of the story. At the same time, the cartoon is more expressive and can make the characters focus more directly to see the characteristics of the characters in the war. At the same time, the work adopts a multi-line structure, combining the evolution of the relationship between father and son, the love of his father, and his father’s personal escape history as clues to tell the story through the plot. Meanwhile, the disturbed time and pictures make readers more curious about the rest of the story, making it less boring to read. At the same time, the use of painting makes the work more layered, and the plot is supplemented from the perspective of another story, such as ‘prisoners on earth’, which, from the perspective of painting in the painting, supplemented the plot of Anja’s suicide and explained one of the factors of her father’s personality change.
Roles of Animals
Those animals also have strong connotations, with mice representing Jews, cats Germans, dogs Americans and pigs’ Poles. The cat is the Nemesis of the mouse, while the dog is the Nemesis of the cat. The pig is different, the pig in people’s eyes is a kind of dirty stupid creature, in the work on behalf of the poles of the pig is also to facilitate torture, not their own mode of thinking, according to the Nazi command form. Greed and stupidity characterize this group, such as the polish goalers at Auschwitz, who misused power for personal gain, and of course there are exceptions such as the polish women who helped the Jews. So the author expresses the characteristics of a nation and lists the special people of that nation. The mouse, representing the Jews, symbolized greed, opportunism, and the image of the weak who knew only to flee. For example, ‘father’ keeps creating the image of hiding place and Anja running around. And the Jews who kept demanding money before the war, and the Jews who wanted to escape and bribe the Germans. The characteristics of survival of this nation constitute their rat-like image. Cats, on behalf of the Germans, have always been cruel and cold-blooded symbols such as playing with Jewish prisoners of war, dropping their hats for them to pick up, and then taking the opportunity to shoot the fugitives on the grounds of killing them. But they also had their advantages, such as order and planning, and if the prisoners were willing to work, they gave them good, optimized living conditions. In this way, readers can judge a nation more rationally.
Use of Irony
The author has also used ironic language to express a contrast between the misfortune and luck in the war. The constant mention of luck in the unfortunate environment creates a kind of satire on the inhumanity of the war, and also expresses the sense of powerlessness and flight of individuals in the war. For example, my father’s luck in surviving the war and his misfortune in being persecuted all the time constituted the greatest irony of the war on the destruction of humanity.
In terms of content, the author created a happy family atmosphere before the war, which was in sharp contrast to the cold-blooded cruelty of the war. For example, what used to be a warm family reunion is now a hanging place for Jews. At the same time, the piles of dead bodies and the burning of the living in Auschwitz constitute a constant scene of persecution during the war. In the form of enlarged cartoon lens, the author shocks the readers’ brain with visual impact through people’s pain and screams. Let this sadness be expressed to the reader in the most intuitive way. On the one hand, it reflects the cruelty and loss of humanity of the German army, on the other hand, it reflects the persecution brought to the nation by the war.
But after the war, the toxicity of the war has not disappeared, want to survive in the war must make a certain choice, either in the adherence to human and moral standards to perish, or in the abandonment of moral ethics in the case of life. The people who were born in secret have lost their instinct for a normal life and seem to have been living in war. For example, in the picture of my father going to the hotel, he chose to avoid the guards and enter the hotel without consumption, just like a mouse who only does speculation. And his father, who had suffered from racial discrimination, also discriminated against others after the war. It shows that the residual poison of war is not dead, but still poisoning every survivor. Therefore, the author expresses the destruction of human nature by war in the changes of the process of war and explains the toxicity of war to readers in an understandable and ironic way.
