Quote 43
“It wasn’t so easy like you think. Everyone was so starving and frightened, and tired they couldn’t believe even what’s in front of their lives.” (II.2.63)
Vladek explains why overt resistance seemed impossible to the Jewish prisoners. Constantly living in fear, starving, exhausted, with the spectacle of other prisoners being randomly beaten or killed around them, they were in an exceptional situation that nothing in their previous lives could have prepared them for.
Quote 44
“Like wild animals they would fight until there was blood. You can’t know what it is, to be hungry.” (II.3.81)
Like Quote #9, another ironic statement, given the representation of characters as animals in the text. The conditions in the camp are so brutal that people are reduced to fighting with each other like animals to survive.
Quote 45
“I got dizzy, so like now, I grabbed to a bush, and I fell…I crawled to the side so people can see me but won’t step on me. Finally someone helped.” (II.5.113)
Now in Florida, Vladek nearly has a heart attack and has to crawl by the sidewalk hoping for help. The stress on “finally” suggests that many people passed him by, a horrifying reminder that human beings may not have changed so much after the Holocaust after all.