Category: Weekly Roundup

            THIS PAST WEEK, we talked a lot about the methods of storytelling, particularly, in Spiegelman’s method for the telling Maus I &II. We mentioned his certain techniques such as using moments that collapse the boundaries between the past and the present, the real and the imaginary. As a result of the author’s techniques, critiques were categorizing Maus into different genres of literature. Some people thought the story was fiction. It seems that Maus could definitely be classified as a postmodern literary work that clashes many types of genres. But, I would have to say it most resembles a creative nonfiction literary work, presented by an author with a fantastical imagination and perception. Spiegelman preserved the historical legitimacy of the characters and their actions as well as the settings or landmarks. But, he uses fictitious visuals to represent his characters. And, he alters the perception of the Art character in fantastical ways to show us how, in some ways, he actually perceives these real events. For instance, there is that panel of when the doctor tells Art that his mom committed suicide. In real life, the doctor probably did not appear so sinister. But at the given moment, that may well have been how Spiegelman perceived the doctor and everyone else for that matter, at that point in his real life. This is why I feel like Maus is a creative nonfiction graphic novel. The author used representational meaning that was fantastical and fictional to evoke very real meaning in very nonfictional events. All the different animals to represent the Jews, Germans, Polish, Americans, they evoked several different meanings. One was to emphasize the idea that Nazis really did see the Jews as a sub-human race and to evoke the feeling of how the Jewish people really had to live like rats in those concentration camps and while they were in hiding.

            The author literally put himself inside the panels to give the readers a level of credibility. He could not depend on his father’s credibility alone, so Spiegelman gets in the story and tells us, I AM STRUGGLING with this. We, the readers, come to accept the idea that there are going to be holes in this story and Vladek cannot completely explain all the events exactly as they were, but our author confesses this, and by doing so, he exposes himself to us, and kind of throws himself on the table. He leaves himself very vulnerable to our judgement, but he also gains our understanding and trust.

If you’re in group 4, you’re responsible for this week’s weekly roundup. Each student in the group will highlight one key moment from the previous week’s online and in-class discussions. To recall the syllabus:

Follow this formula for the highlights: describe the moment (provide the context and the facts about what you saw, read, or heard), interpret the meaning of the moment (what does it mean?), and evaluate its significance (in other words, why was the moment important?).

You can post your highlight in the comments below (or in a separate post).

I apologize for being “unoriginal,” but what I found most interesting this week were the discussions on the symbolic portrayal of characters as various animals.

I think that by portraying the racial and cultural divides more clearly, Spiegelman was able to further show how absurd it is to discriminate based on those factors alone.  To me, it seemed almost natural for different species of animals to be biased against each other, but despite the fact that all characters were portrayed as anthropomorphic animals, it was stated more than once that everyone was human.

In various ways, it seemed that turning the humans into the animals they “became” was an attempt to make the horrors of the Holocaust make some degree of sense, and I found myself sometimes substituting the animals for the actual humans of the Holocaust in my mind when pondering about it.

It took a moment for me to fully register the fact that the tall, vest-wearing, cigarette-smoking mouse that Spiegelman portrayed himself as was the same person as the gaunt, depressed-looking, mustached man in Prisoner on the Hell Planet.

If you’re in group 3, you’re responsible for this week’s weekly roundup. Each student in the group will highlight one key moment from the previous week’s online and in-class discussions. To recall the syllabus:

Follow this formula for the highlights: describe the moment (provide the context and the facts about what you saw, read, or heard), interpret the meaning of the moment (what does it mean?), and evaluate its significance (in other words, why was the moment important?).

You can post your highlight in the comments below (or in a separate post).

This week we covered the use of animals as “masks”, and as division between nationality vs race.  What the aesthetic, cultural, and narrative affects that are the result of the anthropomorphic nature of the text.  We observed some of Art Spiegelman’s earlier work and how that shaped Maus, even becoming incoporated into Maus via Prisoner on the Hell Planet.  We covered the various times we all came into contact with the work (I myself had been familiar with its existance since ever, but regretfully never got around to reading it until this class) and what that means of our readings today.  We even got Inglorius Bastards, Daft Punk, and An American Tail into the discusion.

So what did I most take away from this week?  The utter humanity of the piece, the dynamic artistry applied in its construction, and the surprisingly large amount of metanarrative.

From what I had heard about before of Maus it was a Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel/comic book about mice as jews during the holocaust.  Not much else.  I kept hearing about how it legitimized the medium (often from non-comic afficianados).  How it was innovative in its use of the mechanics of the comic strip (often from comic afficianados).  And how it, along with Schindler’s List, was essential literature to understand the blight on human history that was the Holocaust.  I didn’t appreciate how sorrowful and humanizing it actually was.  When I picked it up to read Maus Book 1 I read the entire thing in one sitting.  And then the next day I re-read it all again, in one sitting.  I would agree with the sentiments about its mechanical complexity as well.  Through the use of limited details and cramped illustrations we get the simultanous sense of isolation of humanity, and the crowding of people.  We also have several visual motifs to guide us, the white circle as covered in class, the use of swastika like images throughout, the juxtaposition of modern and past scenes.

But again, what no one mentioned was how meta it was, I nearly always heard it described as a story of the holocaust, not of the story of the child of a survivor of the holocaust.  That immedialty took my by surprise.  And the story amongst Vladeck, Mala, and Art himself was a real driving force to keep reading for myself.  It was also amusing how he mentioned maus essentially within it’s own pages.

And that’s the week in review, and my reactions to the work covered.

If you’re in group 5, you’re responsible for this week’s weekly roundup. Each student in the group will highlight one key moment from the previous week’s online and in-class discussions. To recall the syllabus:

Follow this formula for the highlights: describe the moment (provide the context and the facts about what you saw, read, or heard), interpret the meaning of the moment (what does it mean?), and evaluate its significance (in other words, why was the moment important?).

You can post your highlight in the comments below.