Maus is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman that details the life of his father Vladek during the Holocaust, where a mass extermination of Jews took place. The novel uses different visual and literary elements to convey its theme of human interdependence, chance, and death. A demonstration of these elements can be seen on page 32 of Maus, where Vladek and his wife Anja traveled to Czechoslovokia and saw the Nazi flag for the first time.
The page starts out with a panel with no borders, which leads to panels 2 and 3 of the page. The first panel shows the train Vladek and Anja is traveling on. The caption reads, "The sanitarium was...one of the most expensive and beautiful in the world." This description is simple, and shows the social class of
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This one shows the Jews looking up and out of the window at a Nazi flag with a swastika. Visual and literal elements are profoundly detailed in panel 4. First of all, the text illustrates the theme of death by the Nazis by saying, "Hanging high in the center of town, it was a Nazi flag." It almost seems as if the Nazi flag is a central menace, suggesting that it symbolizes death while being completely dominant. Next, the extreme size of the panel shows emphasis on its content - that the panel is important, and that the reader should focus on it. In addition, the positioning of the visual parts in panel 4 suggests future events. The Nazi flag is shown to be higher than all of the Jews, almost like a tower among small buildings. The Jews in the train are looking up to the flag in a way that they would look up at something superior. The drawing in the panel expresses the future superiority of the Germans over the Jews. It also fully expresses the theme of human interdependence, death, and chance by showing the few Jews collected together. All of them, collectively, are looking up at the Nazi flag, which symbolizes interdependence. Death and chance are also implemented by the small number of Jews depicted, because many Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust by
... chance of survival. I have dispersed dead leaves over the battlefield, so it symbolizes withering and coming to an end. The plants are dead and this usually occurs during the cold winter months. This also explains why people would have gotten ill and died. The soldiers represented the Nazis power at the time. The interior is covered with red paint around the camp. The red paint represents blood and it is smeared in random places, so this means that death was everywhere and consistent. A huge significant symbol is the sunflower between the two worlds. Half the flower is a bright yellow and the other side is pure black with traces of blood. This flower juxtaposes the two scenes. The left side seems to be more elegant and peaceful. On the other side, the concentration camp looks more dangerous and deadly. These are the presentation technique that I have incorporated.
Again, I had difficulty selecting which piece to use for my second piece. Ultimately I selected Temptation, 1880 William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The dimensions are 39x52 inches and is oil on canvas.
The posters appeal to logos is deeply intertwined with an appeal to pathos due to the poignant nature of the subject matter. Spielberg’s decision to not use faces in the poster emphasizes the gravity of the Holocaust. This coupled with his use of color as well as his omission of color make a poignant statement: The black and white portions of the poster represent the masses of people who will remain unknown as they are merely a name on a list; whereas the red sleeve on the child is like a blatant mark signifying importance of one person who might have otherwise been lost in the sea of people. By marking and highlighting the value of one person, Spielberg comments on the immense bloodshed of the Holocaust as well as emphasizes the value of human life. The firm grip that the adult’s hand has on the child’s hand symbolizes hope despite the strife and carnage that the Holocaust produced. It represents the strong will that many Jewish people had who, even in the face of the crisis, still looked to the future with hope.
In Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Art Spiegelman presents his father’s Holocaust narrative alongside his own personal narrative, especially with regards to his relationship with Vladek. In Maus, Vladek is dependent on his skills and even his flaws to survive. He comes to make these traits a part of him for the rest of his life as he strives to survive no matter what. While these flaws helped him survive as a young man but these same traits estrange him with those that care about him such as his son. In a way there are two Vladeks in Maus, the one in the past that he speaks about and the one that is actually present.
From Hitler throughout the Holocaust, Maus the graphic novel has brought a story of a survivor, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew. Vladek has been there when the Swastika was a symbol of well-being and the goods. From the start of World War II and sustained until the war ended. Vladek survived the war because of luckiness, after that, being resourceful was the reason he lived. Lost his first born son in the process, moved to the United States. Lost his wife and lived with a fear it might happen all over again, he is a survivor of the Holocaust.
In Maus, Art Spiegelman does not make any apologies about what he includes or leaves out from his story. Maus is not meant to be a story that encompasses World War II or the Holocaust, but rather, a story about the life of his father, Vladek Spiegelman:
The Maus series of books tell a very powerful story about one man’s experience in the Holocaust. They do not tell the story in the conventional novel fashion. Instead, the books take on an approach that uses comic windows as a method of conveying the story. One of the most controversial aspects of this method was the use of animals to portray different races of people. The use of animals as human races shows the reader the ideas of the Holocaust a lot more forcefully than simply using humans as the characters.
The author illustrated his characters as different types of animals where in the Jews are represented as mice and the Germans as cats. This representation proposes how the Jews facing the Nazis are as helpless as a mouse caught by a cat. The first part for instance, is introduced by a quotation from Hitler in which he deprives the Jewish race of human qualities by reducing them to a mere vermin: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race but they are not human: (Spiegelman I, 4).
By means of comic illustration and parody, Art Spiegelman wrote a graphic novel about the lives of his parents, Vladek and Anja, before and during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II delves into the emotional struggle he faced as a result of his father’s failure to recover from the trauma he suffered during the Holocaust. In the novel, Vladek’s inability to cope with the horrors he faced while imprisoned, along with his wife’s tragic death, causes him to become emotionally detached from his son, Art. Consequently, Vladek hinders Art’s emotional growth. However, Art overcomes the emotional trauma his father instilled in him through his writing.
During 1925, Mein Kampf was published by the Nazi Leader Adolf Hitler. In this autobiography, where Nazi racist ideas originated, he depicted his struggle with the Jews in Germany. These ideas sparked World War 2 and the Genocide of the Jews. The tragedy of the Holocaust inspired authors, such as Art Spiegelman who produced a Graphic novel, where both the text and images helped him convey his own ideas and messages. In fact, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus is an effective medium for telling a Holocaust narrative and specifically his father’s story of survival. Through this medium, he is able to captivate the readers while providing interesting insight into the tragedy of the Holocaust by using the symbols of animals, the contrast between realism and cartoon imagery and the various basic elements of a graphic novel.
When reading a traditional book, it is up to the reader to imagine the faces and landscapes that are described within. A well written story will describe the images clearly so that you can easily picture the details. In Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, the use of the animals in place of the humans offers a rather comical view in its simplistic relation to the subject and at the same time develops a cryptic mood within the story. His drawings of living conditions in Auschwitz; expressions on the faces of people enduring torture, starvation, and despair; his experience with the mental institution and his mother’s suicide; and occasional snapshots of certain individuals, create a new dynamic between book and reader. By using the form of the graphic novel, Art Spiegelman created a narrative accompanied by pictures instead of needing to use immense worded detail.
Art Spiegelman's Maus II is a book that tells more than the story of one family's struggle to live thought the Holocaust. It gives us a look into the psyche of a survivor's child and how the Holocaust affected him and many other generations of people who were never there at all. Maus II gives the reader a peek into the psyche of Art Spiegelman and the affects of having two parents that survived the Holocaust had on him. Spiegelman demonstrates the affects of being a survivor's child in many ways throughout the book. Examining some of these will give us a better understanding of what it was like to be a part of the Holocaust.
Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus unfolds the story about his father Vladek Spiegleman, and his life during the WWII. Since Vladek and Art are both the narrators of the story, the story not only focuses on Vladek's survival, but also the writing process and the organization of the book itself. Through these two narrators, the book explores various themes such as identity, perspective, survival and guilt. More specifically, Maus suggests that surviving an atrocity results in survivor’s guilt, which wrecks one’s everyday life and their relationships with those around them. It accomplishes this through symbolism and through characterization of Vladek and Anja.
The books Maus I and Maus II, written by Art Spiegelman over a thirteen-year period from 1978-1991, are books that on the surface are written about the Holocaust. The books specifically relate to the author’s father’s experiences pre and post-war as well as his experiences in Auschwitz. The book also explores the author’s very complex relationship between himself and his father, and how the Holocaust further complicates this relationship. On a deeper level the book also dances around the idea of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. The two books are presented in a very interesting way; they are shown in comic form, which provides the ability for Spiegelman to incorporate numerous ideas and complexities to his work.
What if you were a holocaust survivor and asked to describe your catastrophic experience? What part of the event would you begin with, the struggle, the death of innocent Jews, or the cruel witnessed? When survivors are questioned about their experience they shiver from head to toe, recalling what they have been through. Therefore, they use substitutes such as books and diaries to expose these catastrophic events internationally. Books such as Maus, A survivor’s tale by Art Spiegelman, and Anne Frank by Ann Kramer. Spiegelman presents Maus in a comical format; he integrated the significance of Holocaust while maintaining the comic frame structure format, whereas comic books are theoretically supposed to be entertaining. Also, Maus uses a brilliant technique of integrating real life people as animal figures in the book. Individually, both stories involve conflicts among relationships with parents. Furthermore, Maus jumps back and forth in time. Although, Anne Frank by Ann Kramer, uses a completely different technique. Comparatively, both the books have a lot in common, but each book has their own distinctive alterations.