Literature may be used as a mass medium that is just as powerful as television or the Internet when it presents an individual take on an important event by showing it from the inside. Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda by Jean-Philippe Stassen provides a collection of unique insights about the genocide in Rwanda and involves a Euro-centric perspective of the third world crisis; the book stands as an excellent example of the current tendency to reevaluate the past based on newly established views of equality, fairness, political correctness, and civil rights. Stassen’s graphic novel boasts multiple functions: it informs the reader about a frightening recent event (1994); it assists a reader in deepening his or her impressions of that event by tracking the emotional effects of the story; and, it engages many important themes of contemporary times, including social class divisions, relations between the first and third worlds, nationalism, and human rights.
Deogratias
A Tale of Rwanda by Jean-Philippe Stassen is a graphic novel that went to print in 2006 (Glover 106). The novel depicts a tragic and terrifying event that occurred in the territory of Rwanda in 1994, specifically the Rwandan genocide that resulted in the massacre of a large portion of the country’s population that belonged to the ethnic group known as the Tutsi (Silva 4). In the novel, Stassen presents an inside view of the horrors of that event, told from the perspective of an active participant – a young man torn apart by the conflict, forced to pick sides and to make sacrifices that eventually cause him irreparable damage.
The genocide in Rwanda is often compared to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and in turn, Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda has been compared to some personal stories written by Holocaust survivors, such as Night by Elie Wiesel and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. As noticed by Silva, the survivors of such horrific events admit that it feels impossible to find words to describe what they have witnessed (4). In fact, Wiesel was one of the survivors to admit that phenomenon, saying: “I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them” (9). Under such circumstances, graphic novels may serve as a powerful means to help the authors express themselves on a deeper level via imagery in combination with prose.
Being a graphic novel where the main characters are children and adolescents, Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda is often perceived as a work of literature created for children. However, the deep political and social meanings of the book and the events it depicts are more appropriate for an adult mind. Despite the fact that the genocide in Rwanda is frequently compared to the Holocaust, the knowledge about this rather recent and significant event (considering the number of people slaughtered within a short period of time) is still slight in modern society (Hintjens 241-243).
As admitted by Gangi, Western readers are mostly outsiders to cultures that have been affected by genocide (2). This is one aspect of writing about genocide that Stassen took into consideration: he added a European character to the story, the French sergeant, whose image is a constant reminder that the Rwandan perceptions of race and ethnicity were historically transformed due to colonization, which imposed slavery and the notion of superiority of one group over another based on ethnic background (O’Neill 159). Regardless of his mission to maintain safety in Rwanda prior to the onset of the conflict, the sergeant still treats the local population as inferiors; after the massacre ended, his response is, “What a waste!” (Stassen 2-3), referring to the slaughtered women who could have been made into prostitutes. The exaggerated immorality, cynicism, materialistic attitudes, and bitter aggression are obvious traits of this character, who himself represents the West’s role in the story, marking its selfish imperialism and sense of privilege that resulted in a terrible outcome that could not be prevented. These behaviors are expressed through the character’s angry tone and harsh words, as well as his posture and gestures in the included pictures. Western readers are invited to identify with this character and to see how passive observation and ignorance may result in adverse consequences.
To conclude, Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda is a graphic the novel that may be unpleasant and frightening to read or even to look at; however, such masterpieces exist as reminders of past errors, so that future generations remain aware of them. The survivors of the horrific events such as genocide may be slow to tell their stories, but they never doubt that those stories must be told as warnings, for education, and as literary memorials to victims of unfairness and cruelty of the past.
Works Cited
Gangi, Jane. Genocide in Contemporary Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Cambodia to Darfur.London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2014. Print.
Glover, Jonathan D. Narrating crisis: Rwanda, Haiti, and the politics of Commemoration(Doctoral Dissertation).The University of Florida, 2011. Web.
Hintjens, Helen M. “Explaining the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.” Journal of Modern African Studies 37.2 (1999): 241-286. Print.
O’Neill, Kate.The Decolonizing Potential of Local and Metropolitan Literature of the Rwandan Genocide. The University of Calgary, 2012. Web.
Silva, Jessica. “Graphic Content” Interpretations of the Rwandan Genocide through the Graphic Novel. Concordia University, 2009. Web.
Stassen, Jean Philippe. Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda. Trans. Alexis Siegel. New York, New York: First Second, 2006. Print.
Wiesel, Elie.Night.Trans. Marion Wiesel. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2008. Print.