Category: First Readers

The first thing I was drawn to when I picked this graphic novel up was the artwork. I really appreciated the style. It was simple but was able to show the action of the novel. I like the cover because of Numi’s hair and how it looks just like it was blowing in the wind. I also appreciated the subtle references to the political and social issues of the country. The way the story flowed was very interesting to me. You were suddenly immersed into the life of Koby and are taken on an adventure as he assists Numi in finding his father with whom he had become distant. I like how the story was lifelike and how the emotions shown by the characters were believable although I can’t understand someone being so hateful towards their dad. I wish I had known more of a back story but at the same time it wasn’t needed.

One problem I had with the story was the fact that it seemed jumpy at times. The scenes would jump around making the story feel less linear to me at least. I do think it felt like a movie but at times I had a hard time moving from picture to picture. I also had a hard time with Koby’s character. One moment he was fine and the next minute he was acting like a teenage girl. I don’t know if that was on purpose or not but it bothered me as I read the story. I also wondered how such a wild goose chase started as it never seemed Numi had much evidence at all but that was mentioned in the story. I enjoyed Exit Wounds but think it could have flowed better.

One of the things  that surprised me while reading Exit Wounds was how good of a job Rutu Modan did in capturing modern day Israel. Even though this book turns out to be a love story the author excellently portrays the political turmoil in Israel. In very subtle ways she hints at some of the political issues in Israel. She shows how desensitized and accustomed Israelis have become to violence. Pages 46-50 are an excellent example of this nonchalant attitude towards death and the suicide bombings.  Another example would be when Numi mentions that Koby’s father might have died in one of the attacks and  Koby isn’t even sure of which one she’s talking about.  In Exit Wounds, Modan also hints at illegal immigrant workers in Israel and the troubles that they have. The way that the owner of the stationary shop talks about the Filipino cleaning lady, Del, speaks volumes about the issues of immigrant workers. He says that Del probably didn’t even bother going to the hospital after the bombing because of her fear of the immigration police. Its quite disturbing how easily the Filipino cleaning woman switches with another and goes undetected. Another place in the book where Israeli political issues are brought up is when Numi and Koby visit Koby’s mother’s grave. The separation of the graves of Jews and non-Jews in the book  speaks to the larger issue of segregation of Jews and non-Jews that can still be seen in Israeli society today. In the very back of the book there is an interview with Rutu  Modan where she speaks of how she attempted to capture the reality of this separation between the Jews in Israel and the non-Jews. In my opinion her attempt was a success.

Bechdel\'s desk
This random clip of Bechdel reveals her desk in her present life. Or recent past. We talked about the contrast of her desk/ work area with her father’s in the book and how they differ. Here, it looks like Bechdel has sunken into a claustrophobic work space like her father used to have.
Yeah kind of a weird clip of her but I dunno.

The subject matter in Fun Home was definitely not what I had expected from the title or the cover.  I would have guessed from the book cover that this was a story about a kind of hilariously dysfunctional family with the narrator being the one cliche misunderstood voice of sanity.  This story seemed to be 7 chapters of the same exact story told a little bit differently each time.

Each story was told in a past tense voice, and involved the narrator’s struggle with her identity, and with her relationship with her father.  The 1st few stories gave a really harsh portrayal of her father.  He seems to be very short tempered and abusive towards the children.  He also seems very withdrawn and emotionless most of the time.  Later on, especially in the last chapters, the father seems to be very connected with her and they seem to have a genuine appreciation for each other.

I also noticed that there were several stories being told all at once.  There was the diary, which was mostly in chronological order.  There was the childhood tale where she was actually growing up in the home.  There was the college story, which was sort of mixed up chronologically.  There was the story of her evolving relationship with her father, which I assumed was the main story.  And there were a lot of little anecdotes like the father getting stuck in the mud, or the bulldyke scene that were thrown into the mix.  This made the story a little hard to follow timewise, but (in my opinion) was effective at showing milestones in her relationship with her father.

It seems interesting that Funhome includes a number of allusions to different works of literature, most notably so far, Albert Camus’s work and f Marcel Proust and F. Scott Fitzgerald. These stories all help to show the different things that are occurring throughout the story. I think that Alison Bechdel uses this very well because it helps to show a connection and reverence to other works of literature but also how they affect other people. Her dad was distant and cold most of the time but held a special reverence for the books and authors that he wrote. The authors seem to have a place for the Dad that is comforting and can be something that he seems content with. He identifies with the characters and the authors themselves when he writes to his future wife and is seen reading a different book each time that he is presented in a scene. I think too that some of the stories themselves have a special connection to Alison who saw her father through eh lens of the novels and not necessarily through what he was really like.  The use of books and literature help to show how the power of words and a good story can help explain things in our lives that we can’t explain ourselves. The discussion about Camus and absurdity and death/suicide is especially interesting because it develops from one story to another and to another medium through the graphic novel.  It is also somewhat engaging when they reference something in literature that I have read but frustrating when they mention works I haven’t read but it makes the reader  connect and identify characters within the graphic novel memoir to the other literary works.

While reading Maus, I was oddly fascinated by Art Spiegelman’s depiction of his wife, Francoise Mouly. She’s not exactly a central character to the novels, but her involvement in shaping Spiegelman’s art really compelled me to research more about her. I found a really neat interview she did with one of my favorite websites Big Think, where she answers some questions that are particularly pertinent to our class, such as “are comic books good for kids?” and “Francoise Mouly’s Recommended Comics” (which includes some of the comics we’re reading in this class.)

Check it out.

We talked in class several times about the use of animals to represent people.  I think the use of Spiegelman’s use of animals to represent different ethnicities actually helps to clarify his story.  I think that since many of us grew up watching cartoons or disney movies, we are pretty used to the idea of people being represented as animals.  My guess is that even the older generations of people have seen enough mickey mouse or other similar characters that even they would be used to the idea of personified animals.

It also makes sense from the artists viewpoint that he might choose to represent the different ethnicities as different animals.  When we look at how small the panels are in the book, there wasn’t a lot of room for detail.  He could have made the drawings larger, and added photorealistic imagery to the pictures and later shrunk them down, but we still wouldn’t immediately know who was polish, german, swiss, american, etc.  Plus, how exactly does one try to capture their dead parents’ images accurately in so many different frames?  The minimalistic representation of the people as animals also helps show that different cultures might view all members of one race as the same.

I would guess that using cartoon charicters to portray people also helped to take the edge off of the story.  Speigalman was obviously trying to tell the story as accurately as possible… but since the closest he could get is second or third hand accounts of the story it makes sense that the story is missing lots of small detail and can only be represented by generalizing things like ethnicities or accounts of what happened.

I noticed while reading the blog that some people were fascinated by Art’s masterful depiction of Auschwitz and the other camps.  I have to agree with Lauren on this;  seeing those images of sick and dying mice makes you wonder what kind of psychopath would do such things to human beings, and it makes you admire the people who survived against incredible odds.  Again, Art does a superb job of depicting Auschwitz, considering that he has never seen the camp, or the horrors within.  In order to have drawn the death camp so hauntingly, he must have visualized his idea of a place that was the closest to being a real-life hell on earth.  Lauren also makes a good point in that, unless you experienced the Holocaust or something similar, no one would truly be able to understand the atrocities committed in the name of racial superiority.  Everyone gets caught up with the visual representation in Maus, but the dialogue is just as important, too.  The way the accents are captured makes it so easy to hear the characters actually speaking to each other rather than just reading text on a page.

There was a single page in Maus II that really got my attention and held it.  On page 28, Vladek meets a priest who gives him hope in the camp.  As a Catholic my first thought was “Oh my God! Its Maximilian Kolbe!”  Kolbe is a Catholic Saint who was in Auschwitz.  He was Polish and the priest in the novel is drawn as a pig (so he was a Pole).    Well, as it turns out the priest Vladek met could not have been Kolbe because he was killed in 1941, but the page was still striking to me and I began to think about why.

There are two reasons this page was important.  The first is that it, in a small way, widens who the story is about.  The priest is not Jewish.  And I think Spiegelman may have included it to show others who were in the camp.  It also heightens the fact that within Auschwitz’s walls the traditional divides between people fade.  In a survival situation most of the bias people has is stripped away to reveal the best (the priest and Mancie) and the worst (Yidl) in people.  The priest is a great example of this not only because he reaches out and gives Vladek hope, but because it is a Catholic reaching out to a Jewish man.  The relationship between Catholics and Jews has not always been the best and in 1944 there was still a great deal of tension between the two religions.  Yet, the priest does not see Vladek as an enemy, but a fellow human in need of hope.  Spiegelman includes this story to resonate with more people and highlight how people react in extreme circumstances.

What I found most interesting about this first section of Maus II was Vladek’s experiences in Auschwitz/Birkenau/Dachau, and how Art chose to represent them visually. Young Spiegelman struggles with this himself, unsure of how to draw such horrendous events that he’s never actually witnessed. Personally, seeing such gut-wrenching images as the sick and dying mice made me shudder at the thought that this actually happened to people—and even crazier, that they managed to lived through it. Maybe I was the only one who did a few Google searches to look up images of the real Auschwitz and the horrors that happened there? I found some pictures of the Kremas and those haunting Auschwitz gates. Even looking at real photographs, it is still hard to imagine that these tragedies happened. I think it’s actually a testament to Spiegelman’s project—I don’t think he misrepresented anything that happened there, because it can’t be represented at all. Even photographs don’t seem to do it justice, and I think that even if a real survivor illustrated Maus, I still wouldn’t understand what seeing those things in real life was actually like.

Also, the more I read Maus, the more I really appreciate Art Spiegelman’s storytelling. Everyone seems to be focusing a lot on the visual representation (myself included, no doubt) but I’ve been thinking about the incredible job Spiegelman does in capturing his father’s voice and dialogue. Everything seems so natural, and the reader is able to catch on to the subtle nuances, like when Art is being sarcastic toward his father or when he’s being inconsiderate or too persistent in pushing Vladek to continue narrating the story. As much as seeing the images on the paper really helped me visualize the story, I felt even more immersed in Art’s narrative pieces—it’s so easy to “hear” the characters speaking in my head, and I think that really sets Maus apart from some of the other books we’ve read in this class (particularly the ones without any words—obviously).

What I liked about Maus II so much was how much time Spiegelman spent on the “alternate” story line (himself and his father as well as his writing of Maus II).  Especially in the beginning where he discussed the issues he went through with the media and his inability to write and draw after his father’s death.  It added a deeper layer to the story but also to the characters within it.  Making the writer a character within the story, and showing the trials of writing the book that is in my hands gives me a greater appreciation for Art Spiegelman.   It also makes his character so much more real and reminds me yet again that what happens in this book is real.

Along with elaborating on his own character, Maus II really elaborated on Vladek’s character.  This book especially emphasized his actions and feelings that exist because of what happened to him in the holocaust.  I felt like I understood Art and Francoise’s frustration with Vladek, but also this sort of guilt for feeling so frustrated with him.  Doing silly things like saving his wooden matches, leaving the gas on all day, or trying to return half eaten groceries frustrated me as a reader, but at the same time made me feel terrible for this man whose earlier days led him to act like this.  Overall I think Spiegelman did an excellent job in the second half of this story of really making everything real for me.  The characters were real, and I felt for them, even if they did look like mice 🙂

I really enjoyed the way that the second book of Maus started with a depiction of Art sitting at his table and unable to draw.  I think it was an interesting insight on how writing this story is effecting the artist both personally and commercially.  You can sense how much guilt and pressure Art is feeling about telling this story visually by seeing his character shrinking panel by panel into a minuscule man.  It is a heavy task to maneuver all of the business aspects of his work in a way that is respectful to his and his father’s story.  I feel that part of the reason why Art is incorporating more and more of his life and perspective on his father is partially due to the fact that he wants a well rounded impression of his father and how his father interpreted his time during the Holocaust.  I feel that this book is just as much a father son story as it is a memoir of a Holocaust survivor.  I personally enjoy the metaphysical touch of this book as much as I enjoyed the oral tradition vibe of the first book.  It adds variety to the narration and shows a transition from just a father’s story with interjections from his son, to a son’s story about his life with his father and how they live with his father’s ghosts.