“Is it okay to do bad things for a good purpose?”

After reading the first volume of Maus by Art Spiegelman, I wanted to ask this question because it was something that was untouched even in our discussions in class. In the graphic novel, which is a retelling of the World War II era from a Jew’s perspective with animals instead of people, Vladek, the Jew living through this time period, does many things that makes you question if he is a good person or not. Of course, he does seem like a good person from his perspective, from which this story is told from. But anyone can make it seem like that. Vladek lies a lot to preserve his wife’s life and his own, and ends up leaving family members behind to eventually be sent to Auschwitz, even if that means that they will die a painful death. He wants to protect the lives of the two people most important to him, but does that mean it’s morally okay to do so?

Auschwitz was a place portrayed in the story as Hell, and for good reason. For a Jew, a concentration camp meant “eternal suffering” via gas, and then being torched in the ovens and left to die.

In my opinion, I don’t think it is a question of morals when we talk about a tragedy like this one. Everyone’s morals would be warped under the fear that they could be taken away, and Vladek was a victim to this chaotic fear. It has been shown multiple times in the story that he acts impulsively and doesn’t try to save people if it means he gets to live, which is shown numerous times like when he shoots someone in the Polish army, or when he lets Anja’s nephew leave even though he knew he would get gassed. In an environment like the one he lived in, it would be better to keep his self-interest as his first priority. It is even shown when he talks about who lives or dies: “Ilzecki and his wife didn’t come out from the war. But his son remained alive; ours did not” (Spiegelman 107). 

So to answer the question of if it’s morally okay to do these things, I don’t think it is right to come to a conclusion with standard logic, because other things, like the chaotic atmosphere of Poland during that time where everyone feared for their lives, will impact and even change many of the decisions that people make.

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