Blog Post 3: Maus

   Many times in history, the weak have been preyed on by the strong. Sometimes these events are a chase...a game of cat and mouse. And in those instances the weak put up a fight against their enemy, but most times the fight against the enemy is done in vain.

   In Nazi Germany the effort to create a pure Aryan race was indeed a game of cat and mouse, those who practiced Judaism are represented as mice while the predators (cats) symbolize the Nazis. In an effort to establish a culture where there was a "pure" Aryan race those of National Socialist German Workers' Party attempted to concentrate and later eliminate the Jews, along with others who were the bottom of the barrel, like the gypsies. 

   The foreground of the panel displays a pathway in the shape of a swastika. Included with this central image is a depiction of a barren wasteland. This image is symbolic of the ideology of anti-Semites. The drawing of the swastika has a physical contrast in colors (white outlined in black) which directly correlates to the contrast of the anti-Semitic ideas of the Nazis versus those of non followers. The image has a noticeable dominance over the whole panel as Nazis had over the Jews and shows the feeling of superiority over inferiority. In the background of the panel, images like mountains and factories are used. These images are symbolic of the obstacles that the Jews were faced with. The factories represent the gas chambers and ultimately signify certain death. There is a Jewish couple who begin to walk the swastika shaped pathway. They represent the Jewish people as a whole and their fight. All in all, the images in the foreground in conjunction with the images in the background create an overarching message of the struggles of the Jewish people during WWII. The panel demonstrates a tragic tone that illustrates relentless fights against the Nazis done in vain, and helplessness. Meanwhile the mood is one of a menacing nature. The central figure, the swastika path, is white but it is outlined in black, the white inside is symbolic of Nazi ideology while the black is the party's foundation. This meaning that the establishment of a "pure" Aryan race is founded and surrounded by racism and sullied truths. The irony in it all is that purity is taken with a positive connotation but this society is engulfed in an ugly atmosphere of lies and brainwashing. The path is one of many exits that all lead to an unscrupulous demise to say the least.

Lack of Humanity

I chose to do my blog post on page 149 of the first book. This page shows Vladek walking into the city to take a streetcar to see Kawka in Sosnowiec.  While he was walking, he passed a group of children playing. While passing the children, the children starting yelling that he was a Jew, despite his attempt at disguising himself as a German. The children ran to their mothers, and the mothers came outside wondering what was wrong. Vladek then tries to mask the situation he was in by saying “Hail Hitler” and comforting the small children telling them that he wouldn’t hurt them. The mothers then apologized to Vladek saying, “you know how kids are.”

This scene portrays the extreme distinction between the Jews and the Germans. The scene speaks to the lack of humanity during this time. Here are young children, screaming for their mothers simply because a Jew was walking by. They were told from a young age to loathe Jews, to be afraid for their lives when a Jew walks by. It is ironic that mothers told their young children that Jews would do completely irrational things to the Germans, while the Germans were doing such horrible things to the Jews, and they would not think twice about this. Spiegelman effectively represents the actions of the people at that time. He has Vladek calming the Germans, trying to convince them that he is not here to hurt their children.

It is rather odd how Spiegelman represents the conversation between Vladek and the mothers of the children. It seems rather surreal that he approached the mothers, rather than running because then they would know he was a Jew, and tried to keep peace with them by saying “Hail Hitler.” Although they obviously share similar views as him, it is doubtful whether the mothers would simply shrug it off and think nothing of this strange man confronting their children. The mothers simply apologize for their children’s behavior and say “Hail Hitler” and carry on their way.

This scene also proves the power of coercion. Vladek has no problem hailing Hitler despite the fact that he is wrecking him and his people’s life. It is ridiculous what people would do for the simple fact of their life. Similar to this is page 113 where someone confronts a group asking for food for his starving baby. The group thinks that he is lying, and gives him no pity. This scene proves the lack of humanity during that time; it is sickening.

Maus - Memory & History

In these scenes, Vladek is explaining what the gas chambers looked like and what it was like for people when they went into them. He says ‘ You HEARD about the gas, but I’m telling not rumors, but only what really I SAW”. He believes he is an eyewitness when he speaks about what it was like when Jews were gassed. But we know from his stories that what he knows about the gas chambers is what he has been told by others. This shows a conflict between what he actually witnessed versus what he was told but believes are his own memories.

It isn’t clear whether he believes the memories of what it was actually like for people going to the gas chambers to be of first hand experience, because he speaks as if they are but then says that someone else had shared the story with him. We know and Art knows that Vladek’s first hand experience with the gas chamber was seeing it for the first and only time as he was dismantling it for the German’s; which is why he draws images of Vladek working with the other POW and hearing the story that he speaks about as if he witnessed it first hand.

The scene that speaks about what the people believed the gas chamber was – a shower – is another area that makes me question his memory of this. It makes you think that these people had no idea what awaited them, but we know that the Jews in Auschwitz knew about the gas chambers and knew what was going to happen when they went to them.

Vladek’s recollection of this scene at this time seems to be because he wants to believe that the people didn’t know they were about to die so he didn’t feel such guilt. In other parts of the book, Vladek speaks about the gas chambers as if everyone knows what they are and that everyone wants to elongate the time they have before they are sent there. Vladek feels a lot of emotion in the gas chamber because he knows his father, sisters, brothers and so many more were ‘finished’ in a place like this and it haunts him.

This whole scene shows the struggle between the author’s portrayal of Vladek’s stories and the fine line between people’s memory and how they write history. 

This scene in Maus page was so loaded; it shows an innocence and childlikeness that Art becomes when he is overwhelmed by these huge questions non-mouse people are asking him which he frankly doesn't care about; all he cares about is sharing his story and getting it out of his system. He's trying to make sense of this story and all he wants is his mom; he's trying to understand what his parents went through and overwhelmed by having to express adequately what they went through, but also is dealing with his own problems. He never really coped with his mother's death and is still trying to understand why that happened. It's ironic that the reporter says "You'll make your father proud" as a source of stand-up on this page because there is so much going on, questions flying everywhere and Art is guilty for sharing his father's life story with the whole world. It represents a floating thought in the back of Art's head growing up; the responsibility he had to hold his father together which didn't allow him to be a child in that situation; not allowed to grieve his mother's death. They all are wearing masks and it kind of gives a separation between them all; they're each playing a part in this life and come from different backgrounds, it gives an image that they're all trying to just get by in life figure out who they are... what their own story is. Also, he is so focused on his mother's side of her Holocaust story throughout the whole book and feels connected to her, while he just complains about his dad most of the time. It's like he blamed his dad for her death in a way or uses him as an outlet for misplaced blame; in Art's eyes, his dad could be a living representation of the Holocaust. In this page, he's again focused on his mother, "I just want my mommy"...

Also - it plainly shows how sometimes we all just have tantrum breakdowns now and again.

This book is so raw and intricate; it's like peering into Art's mind and tapping into his emotions like he did creating them. This page really showed me how human he was; it's funny that he has a mouse mask on because he couldn't be more human actually. It showed me how he felt, and I could relate to that in a way. It connected me to him and brought the comic to life even more so.

Bad Relationship

I decided to do my blog post on page 128 of the second book. It shows Art, Mala, and Vladek on one of the last days of Vladek's life. This page portrays the broken relationship between Art and his father very well. Firstly, this was the first time that Art has seen his father in about a month, even though Vladek has been very sick and his condition is starting to get a lot worse. Art's reason for this was that he had to "get over the Florida trip." It seems that throughout this book and especially on this page Art blames his father for their bad relationship, which calls into question the biased view on which Art wrote the book. This biased view contributes to the misrepresentations we see throughout the book. Art obviously has a very different view of this situation than his father and if his father wrote the story it would be portrayed very differently. However in this instance we only get Art's view of the story and him and his father's relationship.

On this page Art only comes to tape the last of his father's story. It seems that the only time him and his father get along is when they are talking about the war or the holocaust. It's the only thing that brings peace between them and settles their relationship. It seems as though the war is still deeply rooted in Vladek and most of his daily actions are determined by what he experienced during the holocaust ("The war? Yah, this I still remember." Even though Art seems like a jerk for not visiting his father except to tape his story, he may not be. Instead he may be trying to create a sort of memoir for his father the only way he knows how. This is not however evident in the book.

For these reasons I don't believe this book is factual. In order to study it many interpretations must be made. There are many emotional connections involved in the book which make it hard to know what really happened and what didn't. The bias of Art and his father's bad memory towards the end of his life contribute to the flawed view of history that we see in Maus.

 

 
 

Maus

The fact that Maus is a graphic novel is extremely limiting for Art Speiglman and for the reader in many ways. Like the holocaust survivors who came up to Speiglman at the JCC event  Robin went to in Minneapolis made very clear, pictures really don't do justice to the horror that the holocaust was. Scenes like the one that I attached portray life and death situations as well as criminals crueler than anything that those of us living in a relatively safe America can imagine. The real issue, I think, is that while a graphic novel certainly does not effectively portray the holocaust, nothing else really can, except perhaps listening to the stories in person of those who have been through the camps or seeing the camps oneself. A novel in paragraph form would be no better at expressing the holocaust, there are not words in the english language that would express the terror properly. A graphic novel is not good, but it might just be the least terrible way to teach teenagers and adults about the holocaust.

I chose the scene on page 66, the scene below, because I found that it captures the main issue that the survivors had with Speiglman's way of telling his father's story. On this page, Anja is running and hiding from a nazi. The Nazi woman is supposed to be furious and terrifying, if she catches Anja, Anja will be murdered in a gruesome way. As a reader I expect to be scared of this woman from Speigleman's drawing, but instead I think the nazi woman looks rather goofy and confused in the first image of her and upset but certainly not scary in the second one. I cannot help but to think of Rick Parker's Bevis and Buthead comics, a comedy series, something I should really not associate with the holocaust, while I look at this nazi woman. The inability to make a truly scary pig woman prevents this story from being truer to the holocaust. This may be because I am really not a frequent graphic novel reader, a frequent reader might see that that this face represents something truly terrifying, but as someone who's only read two graphic novels, this face is still associated with a silly children's picture book villain.

Maus as a skewed view of history

There are many sides to every story and one of the main problems with Maus’s story is that all of its content is taken from the same side, the same person and the same traumatic memories.

RED: Art's cousins facial expressions show how Art's emotions twist his view of reality.

BLUE: The doctors position as the bearer of bad news causes Art to view him as an antagonist taking joy in crushing arts world.

On page 101, it is illustrated how fragile people are and how easily their memories can be manipulated by the emotions they felt at that time. The red circles show Art’s cousins facial expressions concerned, hysterically laughing, and then sad. Obviously Art’s cousin wouldn’t actually laugh at the death of Arts mother but in that moment Art felt as if the world was against him so he drew his cousin, who in every other frame portrayed as being negatively affected by this tragedy, as a laughing maniac. The doctor is also portrayed as an antagonist because he had to deliver the bad news. He doesn’t say anything unusual but is explaining to Art what has happened and is therefore portrayed in a negative light. 

This shows a large problem for the story of Maus because all of Maus’s content is taken from Art’s father who was put through a traumatic experience throughout the holocaust. The emotions he felt throughout the holocaust cause his memories to be bias and thereby less accurate. I feel that although the events of Maus are historical, the bias view of Art’s father and the metaphors woven into the story to accentuate these feeling makes Maus into more of a historical fiction than a non-fiction novel.

Hanging over our heads

Art Spiegelman’s drawings in Maus not only function as a simple visual representation of the Holocaust through his fathers eyes, but he also makes terrific metaphors that bridge the simple lines and curves from a pen on page to the words written as well. History often is written and the photographs are usually posed, since photo taking back then was a luxury and often took a long time. The Holocaust is known for it’s terrifying images of concentration camps and starving Jews, but how often do we find actual depictions of the atrocities in action such as the hangings of innocent Jews in the middle of the ghetto created by the Nazis. On page 84 of Maus I, Art has a wonderful frame that takes up about 25% of the page that depicts how tragic and haunting the murders of the Jews within small communities were. It’s very important to appreciate the overlap and placement of two memories within this one frame. At first glance, it appears just to be Vladek, Anja, and Richieu in a room together with the parents in deep thought about the recent news of the hangings. However, the brilliance shines through when you see that the hanging of Vladek’s fellow business partners and friends literally hangs over his head as he ponders about whether he cheated death himself at the expense of his friends. We all have had that guilt when something bad happens to our friends when it could have been us, and that the guilt hangs over our head for, what seems like, forever. With this drawing of the hanging bodies hanging over Anja and Vladek’s head, this “comic book” is certainly not a thrown together random doodle publishing. The ghastly expressions on Vladek’s publically humiliated and mutilated friends also branch this “comic book” further away from the typical comics that serve only a purpose to amuse and entertain. Typically in visual representations of hangings, most victims are shown only from the knee down. We have a “signifier” of dangling feet that twitch for a few second or a noose with no head in it, as a signified representation of someone being hung. However, we rarely actually see the faces of the victims because they are often the most morbid part of the occurrence. Art punches the reality of death by the noose with this frame by showing expression (even if it’s only drawn in on cartoon mice) of how violent a hanging can be with one of the mouse’s eyes bulging out and the open last gasp of air from the second mouse from the right. Another very important detail with this single frame, is the fact of Richieu being the only lit up character in the frame. Both the parents are under the shadow of death, depression, and guilt, while Richieu still maintains the pure and white depiction of naively playing with his doll right next to the parents despite the recent tragedies.