The Importance of Personal Narrative
The English language needs to invent a new word for the act of killing someone without ever killing them.
While I was reading the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, there is a panel where his father admits to having thrown out Art’s late mother’s journals from the time she was by herself in Auschwitz concentration camp. That was the only firsthand account that she kept from that time. Those journals were irreplaceable and now they are gone.
When Art learns this, he shouts at his father that he is a “murderer”. This scene has stuck with me.
I have had a similar experience of feeling like someone is a “murderer” for depriving a person of their experience. What they murdered was the ability for a person to speak for themself, to contribute their art and essence to their experiences, and connect with others.
Why do I feel this so viscerally, though? A person’s unique thoughts and experiences are very intimate things, as is their story- told in the way they want to tell it. We, as outsiders, have no right to it. So when they tell it, we appreciate it. To take that away from someone is… beyond words.
Ways to Deny Someone the Right to Tell Their Own Story
There are a few ways that a person can become a non-murdering murderer in this way:
- Prevent a person from ever developing the ability to tell their story in the first place
- Destroy that person’s story while they are still alive
- Destroy it after they are dead
- If not destroy it entirely, then manipulate it for a purpose unintended by the storyteller
I don’t think there is anything more personal than a person’s story and the words they say about their experiences. Especially if there aren’t many other people able to tell that story. Because then those valuable, unique words are lost forever. That is how you kill someone without ever killing them.
Messy Bun Book Lover
(Originally posted on June 4, 2025)
Read Maus by Art Spiegelman → https://amzn.to/3JehSXw
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