I’m sure the use of cultural identity in the mice masks can be taken in several ways. Spiegelman’s use of the anthropomorphized animals certainly put a distance between the reality of World War II and the cushioned world in which we read a book to experience suffering. However, the basically blank faces of the mice (using only eyebrows and wrinkles for facial expressions) reveal, as Professor Sample said, the meaning of an image entirely apart from the original context.
In addition to this view, McCloud emphasizes that a simple, basic cartoon drawing allows the reader to see himself reflected in the image (36). In that way we can empathize with, although as Lindsay pointed out, not enter, the world of Nazi Germany. McCloud further considers the point of being able to relate information on a more intense basis when there is so little interest in the iconic form: “Who I am is irrelevant. I’m just a little piece of you. But if who I am matters less, maybe what I say will matter more” (37).
Comments about Anja’s pills for nervousness, her postpartum depression, the loss of her first child, and witnessing the slaughter of her family led me to see her as she was depicted when she was young – small and petite. I thought she would just have looked thinner and weaker. When I saw her as Artie did for the last time in “Prisoner on the HELL Planet”, I was astounded by her bulk and by her dark, heavily lidded eyes.
This juxtaposition illustrates how much the word choices and tone of what Anja said influenced what I attended to – I took her appearance for granted and focused on the events and effects of her tragedy. In this way, I think we can accept the Jews as mice, the cats as Nazis, and the Poles as pigs in an allegorical way, while imputing all the evidenced characteristics the story straightforwardly lays out.
-Deb