posted
I've just finished Art Spiegelman's excellent Holocaust memoir, Maus. For those who haven't heard of it, in these comic books Spiegelman weaves recorded stories his father told him of the rise of the Third Reich and his internment at Auschwitz with moden day (well, at the time of the writing) encounters between him and his father. The latter is particularly excellent, in that one gets a better understanding of how the Holocaust affected survivors and their children in later life, something most memoirs fail to provide.
Maus is particularly non-traditional in that not only is it written in comic book form, characters are all drawn as somewhat anthropomorphic animals--cats, mice, pigs, deer, fish, frogs, moths, and dogs. Each animal represents a different nationality--the Jews are mice, the Swedish deer, the Americans dogs, and so on.
Now comes the question for debate. With such representation, it is almost impossible to tell characters apart individually by their appearance; instead, they can only be easily distinguished by nationality. Does Spiegelman intend this to mean that in the Holocaust and WWII, individual identity was lost or obscured by national identity? Later on, he draws these animal faces as masks over human faces, perhaps indicating that individuality still exists, even if it is obscured.
What do you think?
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I don't think he had individuality in mind at all when he was drawing it.
The jews are Mice of course, The germans are Cats. Americans are Dogs. This is a classical cartoon triangle. Cats are always after the Mice but lose to or are scared of the Dogs.
I think the other nationalities are secondary to this trinity.
Plus it gave us the memorable scene of two mice wearing cat masks (trying to pass as germans) "But my wife, she looked jewish." as her mouse tail is exposed through her coat.
posted
Ha, I do love them wearing masks of other animals to be disguised.
What I expressed here is my opinion. I'm thinking on this because I'm writing my IB extended essay either on Maus or Sandman comics, so I've been working on dissecting themes. I think I have Maus figured out, but I can't see any other perspectives and my point of view is usually fairly one-sided in literature. I get the feeling I'm missing something big.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Well, Joldo, if I remember the motto from my IB days: "IB therefore, I BS," then I would say that you could say something like this:
"Spiegelman's use of anthromorphic animals limits the reader's ability to distinguish individual characters from one another. This suggests that individual identity was lost or obscured by national identity during this time period, or perhaps it was lost amid the horrors of war and atrocities of the Nazi party"
Feel free to use or not use anything from this quote.
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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