Abstract: Both Wa
ltz With Bashir and Slaughterhouse-Five dramatize the conflict between the artist’s compulsion to tell the story and his psychological need to repress the traumatic memories which inspire the story. Waltz With Bashir uses animation to delay our confrontation with the narrator’s brutal combat memories, just as Slaughterhouse-Five uses a science fiction narrative to accomplish similar effects. Waltz With Bashir expands the applications of animation by combining the documentary and animated forms, but it also innovates through its use of animation as a narrative strategy.Biographical statement: Jeff Marker earned a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Georgia. He currently teaches film and literature at Gainesville State College. While he is more interested in researching the psychological experience of film and literature than mastering the canon of a particular national cinema or genre, he has begun to focus on animation history as a research and teaching interest. This paper capitalizes on his areas of interest and expertise and exemplifies the comparative nature of his work.