...Graphic novels have been especially successful when it comes to helping readers understand complex ideas, social relations, and abstractions that are often too difficult to put into words. One of the most famous graphic novels to date, Maus by Art Spiegelman is exemplary of this characteristic, seeing as it sheds light on the horrors of the Holocaust, one of the most difficult historical events to conceptualize. Using the unique format of the graphic novel and the literary elements of symbolism...
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...Before the war | 4 | 2.b | During the war | 5 | 2.c | After the war | 6 | 3 | Maus: Graphics and Symbolism | 6 | 4 | Comparative Analysis: Understanding the Characters | | 4.a | Sophie and Vladek | 8 | 4.b | Sophie and Anja | 9 | 4.c | Nathan Landau and Holocaust survivors | 10 | 4.d | Stingo and Art as narrators | 10 | 5 | Bibliography | 11 | Literature from the Holocaust: An Introduction “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” Adolf Hitler Official figures tell that six million Jews, two million Poles, one million Serbs, five million Russians were exterminated during World War II – the actual toll of executions by the Nazi Government, can never be estimated. Holocaust was a period of unspeakable horror and infernal ramifications which were not only felt across Europe but also in places like Laos. When I began this term paper, it was meant to be a study of the literature pertaining to this period of Nazi regime in Poland during World War II. What it turned out to be was a account of implacable and starkly real evil. A subject that has inspired countless movies, novels, real-life accounts, memoirs and poems, the holocaust continues to haunt the imagination of the world even today. It is not history bygone and forgotten, it is a demon that could never be truly obliterated from the lives and minds of the people. The following pages contain an analysis of Maus, the Pulitzer Prize Special Award recipient (1992), and one of the most loved...
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...Spiegelman’s Maus first and perhaps most forcefully established the connection between archives and comics. His groundbreaking work documenting his father’s experience in WWII Poland, where he survived internment in Auschwitz, is a visual narrative based on oral testimony that consistently heightens our awareness of visual, written, and oral archives, and where they interact, overlap, or get transposed one into the other. Hillary Chute recounts and interprets her collaboration with Spiegelman in the process of assembling MetaMaus, a book compiling interviews and archival materials on the making of Maus. MetaMaus, argues Chute, reflects the tension between different kinds of extant archives—oral, written, photographic—and the cross-discursive work of (re)building new archives that motivates Maus. Its defining feature is that it shows the materiality of Spiegelman’s archive; it is about the embodiment of archives. The subject of Maus is the retrieval of memory and ultimately, the creation of memory…. It’s about choices being made, of finding what one can tell, and what one can reveal, and what one can reveal beyond what one knows one is revealing. Those are the things that give real tensile strength to the work—putting the dead into little boxes. – Art Spiegelman (MetaMaus 73) Maus: A Survivor’s Tale is a book about archives. And the book about making Maus, MetaMaus, is both a process of taking stock of the Maus archive and an active process of creating a new archive.1 Maus is about...
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...Persepolis and Maus: Two Survivors and Their Stories. Of the many items that help enhance the horror of the Nazi Holocaust, one of the most notable is what it had of systematic and bureaucratic. Not only killing people, which would have had already been enough, but precisely being made in a quiet and civilized way. It is not strange the image of the Nazi leader quoting his favorite poet while sending to death hundreds of people, belying the myth that culture and education make people better. The Holocaust was primarily an act performed with such rationality that could only become insane. It almost seems that it could have been avoided by appealing to the same reason as well served to run it. As indicated by the subtitle, Maus is the story of a survivor, as told to his son, who in turn transcribed into images and led to comic books. The father and son Vladek Spiegelman is Art Spiegelman. The story, like all of its kind, is bitter and full of cruelties. The work is structured in two levels. In one, the son tells the complex relationship with his father, a survivor of the Nazi camps, while collecting notes for the completion of a comic book that will have the experiences of the war. In the other, we see the story itself, that of a young newlywed couple immersed in the Nazi tumult. In contrast, contemporary events show an apparent visual poverty that hides repressed emotions in really classic and neat little vignettes, in which the author struggles with quiet desperation to...
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...In the books Maus I and Maus II by Art Spiegelman, the father and son relationship with the two main characters is an interesting adventure. The father, Vladek, is a survivor of a tragic 19th century event, the Holocaust. The holocaust has a negative effect on the way Vladek carries himself. Vladeks son, Artie, is getting told the story of the holocaust from a survivors point of view, Vladek is a survivor. Artie is writing a graphic book on the horrific story his father is proposing. Throughout the story, father and son have many disagreements, and certainly an entertaining love and hate relationship. One prime way the holocaust affected Vladek is the lack of trust he has with people. When Artie was a child, he was having problems with some kids at school, whom he referred to as his “friends”. Vladek assured him, “friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room for a week, then you will see what it is, friends!” (Spiegelman, 6). Artie must have had a rough time growing up with Vladek because his lack of trust, and also his compulsiveness of neatness or organization. Vladek constantly needs to keep all of his tasks in extremely precise order. Sometimes his compulsiveness provoke arguments and disagreements. Besides Vladeks thrive for organization, Artie and Vladek disagree on many events, often causing irritable situations. Vladek still treats Artie as if he is a child. He tries to influence the way he dresses by throwing out his coat, and giving him one...
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...Ahmed Hassan English 11 Introduction: Hook: Deprived of food, sleep and family? Maus by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel, that takes the reader on a journey through the holocaust and WWII with Vladek Spiegelman, the Father of Art Spiegelman. Context: Vladek was separated from his wife and was just recently placed in Auschwitz. He was working as a tinman. Vladek is working at the Auschwitz tin shop, though he has never been trained in this profession. During this time, Anja is at Birkenau, a larger camp two miles to the south. Whereas Auschwitz is a camp for workers, Birkenau is just a waiting area for the gas chambers and crematoriums. Thesis: Spiegelman uses Perspective, Imagery and contrast to emphasize what Victimized people go through. Body Paragraph 1 P: Contrast is pivotal in Graphic novels it helps add emphasis to drawings and naturally gives more meaning to many different aspects. Contrast is used a lot in the E: The middle 2 panels. E: Through the use of shading the black background is contrasted to the white characters in the foreground. The black colour is dark and scary and there is a lot of it in this page, it highlights what the Jews were faced with. The pure white Colour of the jews in the foreground highlights the innocence of the Prisoners. This has a positive effect on the reader. By Contrasting the jews and Nazi’s it helps the reader understand the main Character and the plot of the story more. L: This links to the theme...
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...Spiegelman’s Maus is a graphic novel which explores events of the holocaust and the uniting of a father and son. Though often overlooked the dedications play an integral role in better understanding the text. The dedications do not influence the meaning of the book but do reinforce events in the book. Spiegelman dedicates the first book to his mother as an attempt to rid himself of the guilt associated with his mother’s suicide. In an attempt to not have the same short comings as his father, Art associates his most prized work with the most prized people in his life. Richieu is often disregarded in the book however he is vital in Spiegelman’s eyes. The book in its entirety is highly important as it is a dedication to a whole race. Anja is thought to be Artie’s only parent as she is the one that raised him and made him who he is. The dedication to Anja acts as a medium through which Artie tries to apologise to his mother for the grief that he caused her and also a way to thank her. In the Prisoner on The Hell Planet, Art reveals the last moments that he shared with his mother and how all he said to her was “Sure Ma!” in a dismissive tone. This seemingly rude gesture towards his mother wasn’t Spiegelman but rather the LSD induced depression and anxiety. Despite this, Spiegelman was berated for the way he had treated her and this added to what he described as an overwhelming guilt where it was him against the world. While driving to Vladek’s, Art reveals that he used...
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...Often times when reading novels based off of true events, the reader is inclined to interpret what the narrator says to be true. In Art Spiegelman’s Maus, neither Artie nor Vladek could be considered reliable narrators due to Artie being the author of the book thus being able to edit his book however he saw fit, and Vladek is unreliable because his recollection of the Holocaust has a large bias since he only encountered one side of the Holocaust and his memories could be skewed by his age. Artie is not a reliable narrator because he is both the author and narrator and because he has allowed his relationship to his father to bias his perspective. Art Spiegelman chose to show his relationship with his father in the book. “Simultaneously it is a sharp study of the tension that exists between father and son, and the story of the writing of the book itself” (Grossman “Maus…”). Due to him being the author and editor of the book, one cannot trust Artie because he could have edited anything he wanted in order to portray the tension between him and his father in a different light than what it really was. Throughout the novel, Art and Vladek have intense arguments, the most passionate being the final one where Art leaves his father, calling him “Murderer” (159). When taken out of context, it seems a bit extreme for Art to call his father a murderer. But, the way Art wrote about his mother and included the very personal strip that he wrote about her, makes the reader feel for his side...
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...Julia touched on resourcefulness of Vladek, and this continues through chapter 10. In the beginning of the chapter, Vladek (extremely old, weak, and sick) asks Art to help him install storm winds to save a little money on heat. Throughout the chapter, as Vladek continues with the story, he pesters his son about them. This shows that his frugal tendencies are constantly in the back of his mind. In chapter 9, Julia discusses his unwasteful tendencies when Vladek attempts to force Art to finish food. Art tells his father not to push himself, or else he may have another heart attack (which will be much more expensive than heating). Art sometimes needs to act like a father to his father. When he was a young man, there is an example of protective instincts over material goods. On the train from Dachau, he stays up most of the night protecting his Red Cross box from other passengers. He tries to preserve the chocolates as long as possible, presumably to give to Anja. I think once a person has to live through these types of experiences in life, he or she is forever protective of their property and money. Ever since Mala left, Vladek has been extremely lonely and asks Art to come live with him. His son declines the offer, probably because being with his father too long makes him crazy. I think it is sad for Vladek to live all by himself in Queens, and I understand why he tries to get Art to visit as often as possible. When Art asks about installing the storm windows, Vladek says, “Tomorrow...
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...Throughout the whole book, Spiegelman stays inside of the panels for his images. That is the most familiar form of a comic, staying inside of the lines. On page 157 of Maus, Spiegelman goes outside of the panels, and “bleeds” his drawings onto the rest of the page. On the bottom of the page, it is a drawing of the concentration camp Auschwitz with german soldiers. This is “bled” for many reasons. One reason is that the ending is very important to the book, and the plot. It is where Vladek and Anja’s real journey began in the concentration camps. They did not realize that was where they were going to end up, and it was a major shock to them. If this were in a panel and not “bled”, the reader would not understand that it is a major part. Since Spiegelman used regular panels on every other page in the book, the reader is able to tell that it is important since it doesn’t look like the format of the other pages. This page is very meaningful, especially since it is the last page in the book. It is the last conversation between Art and his father, and they got into a fight. In the fourth panel, there is a jagged speech bubble coming from Art’s mouth. He was yelling at his dad because he burned all of Anja’s diaries from the concentration camps. The jagged speech bubble is to show that Art is very mad, and he is...
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...Kenny Smith April 20th, 2003 The role of men in society has been a vital. Men were subjected to the same inhumane and horrifying events that happened during the Holocaust. When one thinks of a man, you think of father, solider and other manly things. A great deal of pride comes along with being and man. Along with pride, testosterone, intensity, and all sorts of other factors key into the characteristics of men. However, the Holocaust completely stripped men of most of these characteristics. The Holocaust did not allow men to be men. Holocaust art, the “Tale of the Sprinter” by Sudeep Pagedar, and Vladek Spiegelman in the memoirs Maus by Art Spiegelman are examples of how men suffered during the Holocaust and the amount of empathy produced from the suffering of these men. Empathy is the ability to see something from somebody else's point of view and to walk a mile in their shoes if you will. Men are very prideful individuals who are very dominating members of society. The atrocity of the Holocaust has been displayed and expressed through various pieces of art and literature. Famous Holocaust painters like Felix Nussbaum have expressed this atrocity through art. Felix Nussbaum was a prisoner at Auschwitz who died there in 1944. The image to the right is one Nussbaum’s paintings that survived the Holocaust. Besides the man sitting on this wooden box, you see two other men in the rear who appear to be using the bathroom. The condition that these men were forced to live in...
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...London Bennett Section 11 February 10, 2015 If Humans are Animals, are Animals Humans? The very dramatic and dark, graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, by Art Spiegelman invites us readers to a hands on account of a Polish Jew’s horrific journey through the unforgettable Holocaust. Maus is not the ordinary comic that you would typically read, but instead, exemplifies another level of genre that fights the “norms” of a comic. Art Spiegelman takes his audience outside of their comfort zone and creatively imbeds a plot twist. For example, as stated in, Understanding Comics, McCloud simply states, “Comics were those bright, colorful magazines filled with bad art, stupid stories and guys in tights” (McCloud 2). Yet, we observe nothing of this sort of depiction either through imagery or language. Within this graphic novel, there are harsh depictions of Jews, Poles and Germans. The careful detail to language and cruel words are loaded with intense tone. As the readers, we encounter several historical points-of-view that Vladek Spiegelman presents: the pre-Holocaust, the Holocaust, and the post-Holocaust that he unearths, layer by layer. He engages his readers through his vivid traumatic encounters along with the sad misfortunes that took place during the Holocaust. Art Spiegelman’s audience can be directed towards those who are engaged by historical autobiographies and, equally so, an audience who seeks to revel in the pain and suffering of others; also he provides a way...
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...Art Spiegelman - Thirteen www.thirteen.org/nyvoices/transcripts/spiegelman.html WNET ART SPIEGELMAN: No, MAUS ended up being kind of a crossover hit. ... LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL says, I guess the message of that film was something like, if you ... Maus I and Life is Beautiful Comparison Essay - Term ... www.studymode.com › Home › Geography Jul 22, 2014 - Maus I and Life is Beautiful Comparison Of all the Holocaust movies that exist, one in particular stands out. directed by Roberto Benigni in 1997 ... "Life Is Beautiful" vs. Maus Ii - College Essays - Noura41298 www.termpaperwarehouse.com › English and Literature Oct 2, 2014 - "Life Is Beautiful" vs. Maus Ii. There have been many re-tells of Holocaust survivor stories. For example, Maus II and “Life is Beautiful” are two ... Maus/Life is Beautiful Compare/Contrast rubric - RCampus https://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?code=S52W55&sp... iRubric S52W55: Compare/Contrast essay scoring rubric.. Free rubric builder and assessment tools. Works inspired by Maus | Analysis of Art Speigleman's ... mausgraphicmemoir.blogspot.com/2012/.../works-inspired-by-maus.htm... Jul 5, 2012 - Maus was serialized in the Raw magazine from 1980 to 1991. ... Roberto Benigni's 1997 italian film Life is Beautiful, original titled La vita è ... Analysis of Art Speigleman's Memoir MAUS mausgraphicmemoir.blogspot.com/ Jul 26, 2012 - Maus I is a memoir about his fathers life and experiences while in Germany ..... LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL says, I guess...
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...What it takes to survive a war “Maus” is graphic novel that tells the story of some survivors of the Holocaust, written by Art Spiegelman. It revolves around the main character Vladek (Art’s father) and his journey starting from years before World War II throughout the war and finally the end of the war and his survival. As a Jewish man, Vladek’s survival through the war and the Nazi concentration camps was genuinely a tough and difficult trip. Not only he survived, but Vladek also managed to carry his family away from the face of death. Quite a few factors contributed to his success, some are physical; such as his various skills and abilities that he used to keep himself alive, while the rest are emotional; like his love to his family, his dedication and his resourcefulness. Vladek was a true handyman, he possessed lots of skills before the war which later turned out to be his boat to the shore of life. He started out in the textile business, where it was more management work than hard labor. Later after Anja fell into a state of depression and he was coming back from the sanitarium, he enlisted into the Polish army, where he learned survival and combat skills that would help him in the long run. He was taken as a prisoner soon enough after the war starts, however, he got released. Vladek got into the black market business, dealing in the black market taught him a lot of skills varying from negotiation and communication skills to life lessons such as not trusting everyone...
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...A Graphic Adventure A Graphic Adventure Nathan Reece Herzing University A Graphic Adventure The holocaust is well known as a very tragic event and a first-hand account of such an event is already intriguing enough. However, Art Spiegelman took the intrigue a step further by telling it through an ironic graphic novel. The short adscript, “Prisoner of War” is an ironic graphic representation of the holocaust from a Russian’s perspective. Artie, a secluded boy, visits his father one of many times to ascertain more information about his past experiences in the war. In this instance his father recollects a time of tragic momentums. Artie listens eagerly although seems to take more interest in the recording story’s events than his father’s suffering. Perhaps one of the most ironic aspects of this graphic novel is the decision to use animals to depict race and nationality. Rats and Mice, for example, are used for the male and female Jewish characters. Cats are used for German soldiers and pigs for the Polish, who were very bitter towards the Germans at this time. This allowed him to depict something through picture that he would normally describe in long script. The variation shows the Jews as pests, which is how society saw them at the time. And it also showed the German as their predators and natural oppressors. Cats are viewed as a control factor for rats and mice, which exactly the way they saw themselves. Prior to telling the story, Vladek is demonstrating...
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