Response to Maus

Q: Explains how stylistic features and generic conventions work together to communicate ideas and perspectives.

Art Speigelman’s graphic novel Maus constructs a moving and tragic representation of the holocaust. Speigelman’s stylistic choices challenge traditional graphic novel conventions to communicate ideas about racism, prejudice, family woman and love through his perspective as a child of a holocaust survivor. He uses framing, symbolism, characterisation, text boxes and gutters to present ideas about humanity.

The novel was written over a period of time, written in two separate books, before being combined into this novel. Art began his first book of Maus while his father was alive, capturing his father’s story, as well as the complex relationship the two had. (quote) Through Art’s perspective and ours we are invited to judge his father, as well as sympathise with him. The tension between the two characters is revealed throughout the txt via speech and actions. In the beginning of book one, after the introduction, Art arrives at his fathers house. The body language between the two is tense, as they move to a clumsy hug. Vladek immediately remonstrates against Art for being late. The two narratives of the book emphasise both Art and his father perspective. Art reveals he is judgemental of his father who is angry at Mala for not giving Art a wire hanger, who sleeps with another woman for four years without intending to marry her and for picking his wife due to her wealth, good breeding and ability to keep a room clean. Through stylistic choices of heavy bold text for the words wire and hanger, as well as the heavy lines which show his fathers body language reflects his anger. Vladek’s account shows no change in attitude, despite living in a contemporary world. Art’s perspective shows he is a modern man, who respects women and treats them as his equal, as highlighted with his conversations with his wife Francoise. “You would never let me talk this long”(P. ) Vladek portrays himself as cunning and heroic, which contrasts with Art’s view of him as sexist, racist and an opportunist. The use of dialogue in the novel reveals that Valdek is racists and judges others based on their ethnic differences, just as the Nazi’s did to him. “A hitchhiker?..-oy-it’s a coloured guy, a shyster! Rush quick the gas”. (P. )His fathers constant need for wealth creates a further barrier between the two, with Art finding it hard to reconcile the two men in his story, the poor suffering Jewish hero and the flawed, opinionated family.

Animals are used in Maus to portray the animals and symbolically represent their place in the German hierarchy. The Jews are mice, animals characterised by their timidity, ability to hide, resourcefulness and cleverness. The cats are the Nazi’s who are known to chase mice and toy with them before killing them. They don’t always kill prey for food and like the Nazi’s they can kill without reason. Mice are also vermin and this is how the Nazi’s saw them, as less than human, something to be hunted and killed before they infest their nation. The dogs are the American’s, who are cats natural enemy and the pigs are the Polish, who do a lot of the early policing of the Jews in Poland. The play on the concept of pig police is not lost on a modern reader. The book uses the concept of Zoomorphism to artistically style the harsh story. We are naturally attracted to mammals over other animals, so the mice, with their gentle nature in the book easily capture the reader’s sympathy. Art uses simplistic drawings to affect the reader and tell the complex story in multiple ways. The Mice are able to convey fear, excitement, worry and anger through the use of limited line. A change in a line under the eye makes the mouse worried, the angle of the ears and hands add to this effect. The mice are less shaded and look paler than the other races in the text. The cat’s faces are drawn crudely and all look alike, symbolising Art cannot distinguish one Nazi from another, because they were all faceless, evil beings. No other characters get the detail and the care as the mice, making the reader empathise with them over the other races.

Speigelman uses stylistic choices to explore the issues of racism and oppression. To enhance the mood and show the fear the characters feel Speigelman uses shading and cross hatching to create a mood of tension and fear. On page 32 we begin to see the narrative of the Holocaust conveyed. The family are travelling to an asylum for Anja, who has succumbed to a deep depression after causing her seamstress tenant to be arrested for her conspiracy with communists. While travelling by we see the first Nazi flag as viewed by the Mice. The flag dominates the frame and is jagged and brutal looking. In the next few scenes the Nazi symbol begins to rise over the scenes as a dark, forbidding presence that will overtake the country. Behind this symbol is pure blackness, the blackness creeps into the country, just like the Jews felt the Germans were. By the end of this scene the blackness overtakes the whole scene, just as Valdek tells us whole towns became Jew free. The shading becomes intense and violent in shape when drama occurs, on page 117 the image of the man wailing is represented by much shading and intense, dark jagged lines. Art even uses intertextuality throughout the book for effect, borrowing stylistic features from 1930’s film posters, then borrowing science fiction styles from 1950’s style film posters, to convey the intensity of feelings he had on his mothers suicide and borrowing the drama of Munch’s scream poster to show the absolute horror felt by the Jewish people. The section ‘Tales from Hell’ which retells his mother’s suicide is inserted into the novel and does not contain animals, but is a more realistic style of graphic. This part of the novel shows how Art’s parents past affected his future. The reader is exposed to the fact that Art himself suffered from depression and had been in mental institution. On his return home he finds out his mother has committed suicide, cutting her wrists and found lying in a pool of blood. Because Art had been depressed and behaving moody he and his family blamed him, he felt he suffered doubly throughout this period of his life. These constant changes in style of drawing, characterisation and symbolism affect the readers perspective on the stories told.

The stylistic form of the graphic novel affects the presentation of the story. This graphic novel more than any others uses that form and then challenges the expectations of the reader. The use of gutters is often a way of dividing information and separating one reality from another. In Maus the gutters are overlapped, images appear in multiple frames and the frames are sometimes removed altogether. On page 32 the train sits at the top of the page without any framing, it travels right to left making the reader uncomfortable and symbolises the way the Nazi’s encroached on everyone’s territory and started killing the Jews across all the counties they took. On page 13 the shapes form the bicycle the father ides on while he relates his tale, the physical journey mapping his past journey as a survivor. Text boxes and bubble shapes are used to convey emotion, with jagged lines around the boxes showing anger, wobbly ones showing the memory is not clear and should be approached with caution. The unique change of native point of view also creates a text that can reveal each persons feelings towards the issues explored. The novel is told by Art, in first person and in others as a narrator of his fathers actions. When his father speaks it is within the borders of the image and in a speech bubble. In other pages there can be facts stated by an unknown source, giving the reader context and information necessary to the events in the novel.

Speigelman explores the complexity of reality through the use of conventions and stylistic features that are challenged. The technique of meta-fiction is used in the section where Art addresses his wife about his issues telling the story and his struggle to accurately represent his fathers experience of the Holocaust. The speech bubble states “I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that is worse than my darkest dreams…there is so much that I’ll never be to understand or visualise. I mean reality is too complex for comics…so much has to be left out or distorted.” (P. )This line and stylistic choice to break the wall between the reader and the story shows Spiegelman’s struggle to express all of the holocaust. This clearly reflects the truth that this story can never be told by one author or one survivor, because each persons horrific experience is personal and individual.

Spiegelman uses generic and stylistic features to recreate an aspect of the holocaust as experienced by his father. This book crosses boundaries, containing memoirs, graphic symbolism, stylisation of stories and much more. Art not only retells the holocausts, but also reveals how it impacts survivors and their families years on. During the time of the holocaust Jewish people were stripped of their rights, they were viewed as vermin to be eradicated, they were stripped of their humanity and abused on a level never seen before in world history. Spiegelman uses the graphic genre to artistically recreate a story of one person’s survival and his family. He challenges our expectations of the comic genre to make a unique and shocking portrayal of the darkest time in humanity.

Response 2

Explain how stylistic features and generic conventions work together to communicate ideas and perspectives.

The graphic novel Maus by Art Speigelman creates an emotional and devastating retelling of the Holocaust, a series of death camps in Germany created by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 that caused the death of approximately 11 million people. Speigelman employs conventions that communicate ideas about racism, family, guilt and the strong links between the past and the present. This is done through cross hatching and shading, dialogue, facial expressions, and characterisation, which are constructed to show the perspective of both Art, as the child of a Holocaust survivor, and his father Vladek, as one of the survivors[SC1] .

Racism is a key aspect of Maus, as it is so deeply engrained in the Nazi’s hatred for Jewish people and the cause of such suffering and devastation. However racism takes another form in this graphic novel, through the character Vladek, who despite his own horrid experience with racism, is racist himself. When Art’s girlfriend Francoise picked up an African-American hitchhiker when returning from the grocery store Vladek could hardly contain his rage that she had allowed a ‘shvartser’ into the car. “A hitch-hiker? And – oy – it’s a coloured guy, a Shvartser! Push quick the gas!” (259) In this scene racism is constructed through dialogue and facial expressions, seen through the jagged lines of Vladek’s downturned eyebrows to show his anger, which conveys Vladek’s discriminatory nature that is not unlike many in German society during the time of the Holocaust. Art views his father withdisgust over his racial intolerance, because he knows of the great suffering that Vladek had to endure due to the racism of others. In response to Vladek’s outburst Francoise voices her opinion, ”That’s outrageous! How can you, of all people, be such a racist! You talk about blacks the way the Nazis talked about Jews.” Art’s only reply to this is “Forget it honey, he’s hopeless,” which shows that Art is fully aware and ashamed of how difficult and unreasonable his father’s views on race are. Speigelman has portrayed Vladek’s prejudice to construct the idea that racism is present in different forms in a lot of people, and despite what some go through they remain naive to the negative consequences not realising this made the Holocaust and many other racial abuse possible.

Speigelman has illustrated the differences between, father and son, through characterisation and dialogue to construct the difficulty that many Holocaust survivors had with their children, as their surroundings and world views were so vastly disparate. Art struggles with establishing a good relationship with his father throughout the novel, as Vladek has been shaped by an event that Art will never be able experience, thus never being able to relate to his father’s life. “I mean, I can’t even make any sense out of my relationship with my father … how am I supposed to make sense out of Auschwitz? … of the Holocaust?” (II.1.4) The physical and mental scars that both his parents received from the Holocaust would have affected his childhood and made it hard for a strong connection with his family. “When I was little, if I didn’t eat everything Mum served, Pop and I would argue til I ran to my room crying.” (45) Vladek appears to have developed a need for hyper-perfection in all things, such as money counting, nail sorting, and pill counting, a neurotic obsessiveness that the other Holocaust survivors find strange. It is characteristics and traits like this that contribute to Art’s sense of disillusionment from his father, as he attempts to understand his father’s past and the events of the Holocaust[SC2] .

Speigelman has created the persona of Art top explore his feeling that his life is overshadowed by his father’s achievements and survival; constructing the important concept that the link between the past and present is immense. In Chapter 2 of Part 2 Art is shown to be sitting atop a large pile of dead bodies and later walks through streets of perished figures. This is symbolic of the way the Holocaust still affects the present, and how the past of the survivors affects their children. The use of limited lighting in these scenes and cross hatching on Art’s mask convey the pressure and unease he feels in overcoming the past. When Art looks outside the window he sees barbed wire and a watch tower, and when walking outside there is a spotlight trained on him, similar to those the Nazi guards used, and in the background there is a skull and cross bones. These details are symbolic of Art’s sense of entrapment, and establishes the idea that he is trying to relate his own experiences back to the Holocaust. This[SC3] scene explores how Art feels his life revolves around his father’s past and the history of the Holocaust, and is emphasised when Art reveals that he and Francoise are expecting a child in May, and then follows up with the statistic of how many Jews were gassed between May 16th to the 24th of 1944. “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz” (34) This clearly shows how Art believes that all of his greatest achievements, even the momentous celebration of soon becoming a father, are overshadowed by his father’s survival, thus emphasising the link between the past and present.

Response 3

Q: Explains how stylistic features and generic conventions work together to communicate ideas and perspectives.

The novel was written over a period of time, written in two separate books, before being combined into this novel. Art began his first book of Maus while his father was alive, capturing his father’s story, as well as the complex relationship the two had. (quote) Through Art’s perspective and ours we are invited to judge his father, as well as sympathise with him. The tension between the two characters is revealed throughout the txt via speech and actions. In the beginning of book one, after the introduction, Art arrives at his fathers house. The body language between the two is tense, as they move to a clumsy hug. Vladek immediately remonstrates against Art for being late. The two narratives of the book emphasise both Art and his father perspective. Art reveals he is judgemental of his father who is angry at Mala for giving Art a wire hanger, who sleeps with another woman for four years without intending to marry her and for picking his wife due to her wealth, good breeding and ability to keep a room clean. Through stylistic choices of heavy bold text for the words wire and hanger, as well as the heavy lines which show his fathers body language reflects his anger. Vladek’s account shows no change in attitude, despite living in a contemporary world. Art’s perspective shows he is a modern man, who respects women and treats them as his equal, as highlighted with his conversations with his wife Francoise. “You would never let me talk this long”(P. ) Vladek portrays himself as cunning and heroic, which contrasts with Art’s view of him as sexist, racist and an opportunist. The use of dialogue in the novel reveals that Valdek is racists and judges others based on their ethnic differences, just as the Nazi’s did to him. “A hitchhiker?..-oy-it’s a coloured guy, a shyster! Rush quick the gas”. (P. )His fathers constant need for wealth creates a further barrier between the two, with Art finding it hard to reconcile the two men in his story, the poor suffering Jewish hero and the flawed, opinionated family.

No other characters get the detail and the care as the mice, making the reader empathise with them over the other races.

than my darkest dreams…there is so much that I’ll never be to understand or visualise. I mean reality is too complex for comics…so much has to be left out or distorted.” (P. )This line and stylistic choice to break the wall between the reader and the story shows Spiegelman’s struggle to express all of the holocaust. This clearly reflects the truth that this story can never be told by one author or one survivor, because each persons horrific experience is personal and individual.