Hana, Maurice and his rats - Essay Example

Introduction All branches of art have always reflected real life and literature is no different. Through their many words, plots and stories, authors regularly try to give the real world a voice within the fiction. Children’s literature also illustrates life and society in the same way. The characters from these pieces of literature go through intense struggle, sometimes against the world and at times against themselves; the point is to teach a child that life consists of ups and downs and those ups and downs have to be worked with and not ignored. In fact children’s literature holds better examples of lessons than any other kind of fiction because they always come with a set of rules and morals that the child is expected to take away from the book. The two books under discussion here are Levine’s Hana’s Suitcase: A true story, and Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. Levine’s Hanas Suitcase: A True Story is about a young girl, Hana, a Jewish girl who lived in Nazi times. She and her brother, George, were forcibly sent to Terezin by the Nazis. It was then that the suitcase comes in the story, as she packed up a suitcase with all the extremely essential supplies when they had to leave. This is a classical example of one’s conflict and struggle against society. Where as The amazing Maurice and his Education Rodents can be seen as the pied piper story with a twist. Maurice, the cat, leads his band of intelligent rats scamming towns with the help of the dumb boy Keith. Both the stories give us an insight into a world which we normally cannot imagine on our own. While Hana’s story tells us the tale of conflict with society, Maurice and his rats show us conflict with oneself and conflict with nature. Characters from both the books have to go through a lot of anguish and turmoil in life. What we see is the lives of the rats and Hana when they had some systematic structure and then again when that structure is taken away i.e. when Hana begins to feel isolated from the world and when the rats get stuck battling the rat catchers in the town of Bad Blintz. Writing about Hana, Levine tries to showcase how hard life must have been for the girl. Even adults could not grasp the idea of leaving their lives as they knew then, it would only have been impossible for a little girl to understand. We can gauge the severity of this through the scene where Mr Rott the neighbour suggests to Hana’s parents that maybe they should leave Czechoslovakia, everyone is“...taken aback. ‘Are you crazy, Mr Rott?’ one asked. ‘This is our home. This is where we belong’” (Levine p.19). Hana had to leave her life as she knew it and had to deal with a lot of courage to fight the despair. We are shown the dark side of humanity in this book; similarly, Pratchett does not promote a very positive image of mankind either. When the rats face Spider in Bad Blintz the voice of spider tells them “You will have worked out that there is a race in this world which steals and kills and spreads disease and despoils what it cannot use”, said the voice of Spider. “Yes,” said Dangerous Beans. “Thats easy. Its called humanity,” (Pratchett p. 206). The Characters are similar in the fact that they face a world where humans are not good for their deeds. When Hana’s suitcase arrives at Auschwitz Museum from where it is exhibited in “The Holocaust through Children’s Eyes,” at the Tokyo Holocaust Center. Although she had died, her suitcase survived, and the museum curator Fumiko Ishioka, decides to prod into the story of Hana. She felt that Hana is more important than the suitcase itself. She spends a full year attempting to find out about Hana and in the end her efforts do pay off. Talking about the connection of the three characters Levine writes, "Such amazing connections and strange coincidences had brought three worlds together the world of children in Japans, George in Canada, and the lost world of a Jewish girl from Czechslovakia who had died so long ago” (Levine p.99). The rats too in a way lose everything; their supposed way of life is based on the book Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure which turns out to be nothing more than a children’s book in the later parts of the novel; that can in a way be compared to Hana and being forced to come to terms with her religion which became the reason for her downfall. There is disorder and confusion when it comes to the chosen way of life for both the rats and for Hana. Hana finds her life becoming more and more restricted after Hitler takes over. It doesn’t take long for the Nazi regime to limit the activities of Jewish families. And soon it seems that she can no longer go to a park or go to school. Having to wear the star of David as a marker also throws her into social isolation as other children are afraid and do not want to be friends with her. The rats have to go through hell in order to survive Bad Blintz. The rat catchers take their only supportive human counterparts i.e. Malicia and Keith, and lock them up. This is also the point where Maurice can feel a voice penetrating his mind (Spider). The voice destroys the intellect of many of the rats and they go back to being nothing but normal rats. We can see the element of conflict in Maurice as well when he struggles against the urge to attack Spider because he is a cat while his mind tells him to sever the Spider’s tails to end his control over everything else. The themes of conflict are dominant throughout the work whether it is conflict against society, nature or oneself. The rats want to do things as the human’s do them but all the humans want is to be rid of the rats. They go against nature and become these creatures that are intelligent and can think for themselves unlike normal rats. This is evident through Darkan’s words who says, “Heres what I suggest… You pretend that rats can think, and Ill promise to pretend that humans can think, too” (Pratchett p. 247). Unlike the rats though, Hana has no one to look to and nowhere to turn. In the end of the story Maurice saves Dangerous Beans and even gives up one of his lives so that death will not come to Dangerous Beans. He does so because he is his friend and he believes that he will always be there for him. Hana had no luxury. The difference between the two is because Hana’s story is real and not fiction where as Pratchett has built his story on fantastical elements. So a happy ending can be understood; we can also argue that in the real world there are no happy endings because Hana dies. Her brother, who is her only surviving relative, is far far away from her when she passes on. She has to struggle against cruelty and oppression alone. This book can mainly be categorized as a faction. A faction is a neologism that is used for describing film genres having fact as well as fiction. Even though this story is a true one, there is a certain degree of fiction involved as the author puts in her imagination regarding the emotions that Hana must have felt at various occasions. These were not recorded nor could the author find about it anyway. Therefore, the author invents these to make the account more meaningful, and in doing so she enters a slight amount of fiction to the book. Conclusion Through the twists and turns of a plot a human mind can go very far. Our imagination makes literature a reality for us. Hana’s Suitcase: A true story and The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, captivate their readers. The flow of language is very simple and easy to follow and they become a treat for not just children who are the main target audience, but adults as well. We follow the lives and follies of Hana and Maurice and his rats to learn of their lives and how they were made difficult because of the circumstances they were in. Any reader can relate to the matter in books the novels. We can sympathize with Hana and her fate and we can feel the torment that she must have gone through. Similarly, we see the rats and we see how they function together as a unit. Throughout the works we are shown various levels of conflict that the characters come into; be it conflict against oneself, nature or society. Works Cited Levine, Karen. Hanas Suitcase: A True Story. Pratchett, Terry. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. Read More